Knitting Bones (7 page)

“Where’s the ball?” Jill asked Emma.

Emma looked around, then back at her mother and shrugged her baby shoulders.

“It’s behind a pillow,” hinted Betsy.

Emma studied Betsy as if waiting for further enlightenment, but Betsy merely winked and nodded. Emma looked around the room again and saw the brightly colored needlepoint pillow on the upholstered chair. With a glad cry, she ran to it and pulled the pillow away. But no ball was behind it.

She looked accusingly at Betsy, her lower lip threatening to do its trick again—then saw how Betsy was moving her head against the big pillow on the couch. Emma laughed and ran to thrust a chubby hand behind the pillow, and pulled out the ball with a loud shriek of delight. She spent the next several minutes clumsily throwing and kicking the ball around the room while Jill and Betsy talked.

“How’s the healing coming along?” Jill asked.

“Oh, not too bad. There’s still some pain, of course. And the exercises are aggravating. I think it’s too soon to do all they’re asking me to do. Leg lifts really hurt.”

“Do you think you’re reinjuring the bones?”

“They say I’m not, that the plate they put in there will protect it against the movements I’m doing. But it
hurts!”
Betsy saw Emma look at her with alarm and closed her lips firmly over further whining. She said instead, “I just wish I didn’t feel so useless.”

Jill said, “I think you need to give yourself some time. As the healing really takes hold, you’ll find plenty to do.” She stood. “And now I think it’s time we went away and left you to it. Emma Beth, what would you like for lunch?”

“Mackincheeeeese!” crowed Emma immediately, dropping the ball and trotting to reach for her mother’s hand.

“Bless you for coming,” said Betsy. “You really gave me a good idea. I wonder what other obvious thing I’m missing?”

“Me, too,” said Jill, and she let the merest hint of a twinkle show in her eye. “Come on, baby, let’s go home.”

B
ETSY’S
curious failure to think of something so obvious as calling Susan Lavery left her shaken. What was the matter with her? Was it the pain meds? Or was it simply that she had eaten only a dry piece of toast for breakfast this morning, and nothing since?

She got to her good foot, grabbed her crutches and did the “dot and go one”—her father’s expression for anyone walking on crutches—into her galley kitchen to open a can of soup. She had very little appetite, which she would ordinarily consider a good thing, as she was generally in the middle of a fight between her waistline and her love of good food. On the other hand, the visiting nurse had warned her she needed to nourish her injured body so it could grow the new bone it needed to mend itself. She decided cream of chicken soup would be the easiest wise choice and balanced on one foot while pulling the tab that opened the can’s top. She used the last of her milk to make the soup and actually ate most of it. And did feel better.

After lunch, she went to phone Susan Lavery at her home. She got Susan’s voice mail and left a brief message. Susan’s cell phone went directly to voice mail, too. Since she worked for a criminal defense attorney named Marvin Lebowski, Betsy called Marvin’s law firm and talked to Mr. Lebowski’s secretary.

“Hi, Phyllis, is Susan there?” asked Betsy.

“Oh, I’m sorry, she isn’t. She’s out all this week.”

“Vacation or on a case?” Betsy had hired Mr. Lebowski to defend Godwin last year—which he did, very capably, with her help—and as a side effect of the case, Susan Lavery gave up her own position in a law firm to work for Lebowski as a PI.

“A case. She’ll be gone at least all this week and possibly most of next week, too.”

“Would it be possible to contact her somehow?”

“No, I’m sorry, she’s out of touch unless it’s a real emergency. Is this something that serious?”

“No, no. I wanted her to do some investigating for me.”

“Maybe she’ll finish up this week. I’ll have her call you when she gets back in town.”

“Okay. Thanks, Phyllis.” Betsy sighed deeply and hung up.

She was back to deciding whether to let Godwin continue sleuthing or pressing harder on Jill to help.

“N
O,”
said Jill, on the phone. “I told you, I have a full-time job taking care of Emma Beth. Maybe when she’s older, in first grade, say; then I’ll think about it.” Betsy could hear a smile in her voice as she continued, “Of course, by then I may have a little brother for Emma Beth.”

“Say, you aren’t—”

“No, I’m not—yet.”

Betsy groaned inwardly. Jill in a nesting mood was not at all what she wanted. She teased cruelly, “I hope it’s twins.”

“Then I’ll give one to you.”

“Triplets?”

“The other one to Goddy.”

Betsy laughed. “Can you imagine Godwin with a baby?”

“Now, don’t cast aspersions, he might make a very nice parent.”

“At the very least, his baby would be the best-dressed of the three.” Godwin’s sense of color and style were legendary.

“Seriously, Betsy, I’d like to help, but not by going out on a case. Maybe I can consult with Godwin, give him some hints about talking to people and how to judge whether they are holding back or lying.”

“That actually might be a great help. Thank you.”

G
ODWIN
was having a very interesting conversation with a young woman making her first quilt. “It’s not just my first, it’s my last,” Sharon was saying. “I had no idea how complicated it was when I started it, or how long it was going to take. I could have finished a Marilyn Leavitt Imblum pattern in the time it’s taken me just to accumulate the fabric and cut it.” She was a short, stocky woman in her middle thirties, with thick, light brown hair tied back loosely at the nape of her neck. She wore a pink cotton sweater of a complex pattern she had probably knit herself. “It’s not like I’m doing a fancy pattern, I’m just doing four-inch squares.”

Godwin nodded sympathetically. “I’ve avoided quilt shops,” he said. “The fabric is so gorgeous I’m sure I’d be tempted into quilting.
Just
the thing I need, another needlework project!” He looked around Crewel World, which didn’t sell beautifully patterned fabrics. “So how can we help you?”

“Well, my theme for this quilt is chickens.”

“…Chickens?”

“I know, it’s silly. But I must not be alone—there are dozens and dozens of fabrics with a chicken theme, especially if you include things like fried eggs and grilled chicken legs.” She laughed softly, a little embarrassed.

Godwin made a pained face, and Sharon said, “Pathetic, I know. But eggs and fried parts are the reason we have chickens, right? Anyway, I’ve got two counted patterns already finished—one’s a hen and the other’s a rooster—and I didn’t know what to do with them until I thought how cute they’d be in my quilt. But two’s either too many or not enough.”

Godwin smiled. “And you’ve decided they’re not enough.”

“Right.”

In a few minutes they had rounded up Jeanette Crews’s counted cross-stitch pattern Rooster Serenade, featuring two Mexican-style roosters—they’d finish at eight by eight inches, but that was fine; a booklet from Cross My Heart called Little Critters, which had a simple pattern of a rooster’s head in it that could be done on low-count fabric to make it four by four; a small square painted canvas of a baby chick labeled Share One’s Ideas; a punch needle called, simply, Rooster, designed by Rachel T. Pellman; a Cedar Hill sampler of a hen and chicks (“I’ll leave out the alphabet and some of the chicks,” said Sharon); a set of machine appliqué patterns from Debora Konchinsky featuring sixteen chicken patterns, if you counted the guinea hen as one; and another painted canvas of a Picassostyle hen—Sharon had the counted cross-stitch pattern of Picasso’s rooster at home.

“There, that should keep me for a while!” she enthused at the checkout desk.

Godwin happily added up the charges and was happy all over again when Sharon did not gasp at the total cost or groan or decide to change her mind about some of the patterns. But as he was bagging up her purchases, she said in a much more sober voice, “Goddy, you were at the EGA convention banquet, weren’t you?”

He paused to look at her. “Yes, I was. I got Betsy’s ticket because she was in the hospital. Why, were you there, too?”

“Yes. I sat at a table with my mother and four other relatives—it was a combination stitch-in and family reunion at my house all that week. But we heard about the Heart Coalition man running off with the check for the money we raised, and I wondered if Betsy is involved in the investigation.”

“She wants to be, but her broken leg is keeping her at home for now.” Godwin leaned over the big, old desk that Crewel World used as a checkout counter and murmured, “But I’m helping. I’m talking to people who know something about it and bringing the information to her.”

“Really?” Sharon breathed, eyes widening. “I’m glad to hear that, because I think my mother has something important to tell you.”

T
ONY
was going desultorily through his mail. It had piled up a bit—he wasn’t ever very interested in mail, unless it had a check in it, his or someone else’s that he could glom onto, or unless there was a big sale on at Macy’s, which used to be Marshall Fields, which used to be Dayton’s. Odd how even the big companies merged and split nowadays. He could remember his grandmother’s intense loyalty to Dayton’s. Today you couldn’t be loyal for long to any department store.

He quickly put aside a notice from the management company that ran his apartment building. He’d stopped paying rent a couple of months ago in anticipation of fleeing the country, but now he’d have to do something about getting caught up. That wouldn’t happen until he closed that phony Heart Fund account, and getting out and around was too painful right now. His eye was caught by an envelope with a return address of the Minneapolis Impound Lot.

Oh, hell, his
car
. Which he’d been driving when he’d had the accident. Now he remembered how, once he’d been sitting up and paying attention in the hospital, he wondered what had happened to his car. And where it had gotten to. “Call the police,” his nurse had advised him. “They’ll know.”

But Tony, for several good reasons, didn’t like talking to the police. Besides, if the accident was so serious they’d had to cut him out of his car, then probably his car was not just toast, it was burnt toast, and he was no longer interested in it.

But maybe not.

He opened the envelope hopefully—and gave a sincere groan of despair. His car had been towed, the form letter inside informed him, and they were charging him eighteen dollars a day to keep it until he came to claim it.
And
it wasn’t just the storage fee he owed them, there was also their “heavy-duty tow” charge of a hundred seventy-five,
and
their ninety-dollar “winch time” money.

“Huh!” Tony muttered, tossing the form letter on the coffee table. They could go whistle for their money.

But the notion of rent and now these car charges made him uneasily aware of the thin state of his finances. He’d called the airline where he’d bought his ticket and spun the sad story of his car accident, but had they forgiven him the price of his ticket? Of course not; hadn’t he been informed that the special bargain price he’d bought it for was absolutely not refundable?

And the twenty-four grand? That turned out to be a hatful of smoke. He wished he could remember what went wrong! He clenched his good fist as he sighed after the lost party time, the hot sun on the friendly beaches.

But so what? Right? So what? It wasn’t as if he were on the street. He had some money in his wallet, and some credit left. Not a lot, but some. And there was the four thousand dollars in that Heart Fund account. That money was going to be a great comfort very soon.

Still, it would be good to run a con on someone, just to keep his hand in. Too bad his good looks were—temporarily, but still—marred by a huge black eye, a scabby cut on one cheek, and a swollen, purple ear. He could pull the “just need fifty more dollars for a plane ticket” scam, but that meant he’d have to stand for hours at the airport, which he wasn’t up to—plus, he couldn’t hustle away if a cop turned up. But he sure wasn’t ready for the dance floor or even a bit of sleight of hand. It made him uncomfortable to realize that; he’d always relied on his charm, handsome face, and smooth moves to get him into the right circles and out again—swiftly, if necessary. It would be a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, before he regained that edge.

He pushed the rest of the mail aside. He’d gotten an uneasy glimpse of some bill-like envelopes from his doctor and the hospital, which he was sure represented the deductibles they mentioned when he’d checked out. What was the good of health insurance, anyway, if you still ended up paying out big hunks of money? It was a gyp! Well, he’d show them, he wasn’t even going to open the envelopes.

So long as he could continue living in this apartment, and eating, and have lights to turn on at night, and warm water to bathe in, he was okay.

But that meant he’d better go empty that Heart Fund account—that con was over as far as he was concerned.

He’d show them his wounds and they’d feel sorry for him and probably not check his papers too closely. Like the fact that his ID card said Mail Room on it, not Chief Financial Officer like he’d written on the application to open the account.

Better go while the going was good. He took a deep, energy-giving breath and rose to his feet. But he hadn’t taken care to plant his crutch solidly. It slid across the low-nap carpet, and he fell. His head thumped painfully on the floor and spasms of pain shot through his injured arm and leg. He lay there for a minute, waiting for things to settle down. But his head only went from sharp pain to thick ache, and his arm and leg throbbed almost like they did when he first left the hospital. He lay there for several more minutes before beginning the long, slow struggle to regain his feet. Was this bad enough to warrant a call to his doctor?

No, he might ask him for a payment, so never mind.

But no going out to the bank today.

He lurched slowly into his bathroom, took a double dose of pain pills, and in five minutes was draped across his bed, letting the Vicodin ease the hurt.

He wasn’t quite asleep when his phone began to ring. He tried to work the noise into the dream he was starting but it was too loud and insistent.

He waited for his answering machine to pick it up, then remembered that he hadn’t listened to his messages, and the phone wouldn’t transfer calls to a full box. Damn.

He rolled over and reached for the cordless phone on the bedside table. “H’lo?” he grumbled, thick-tongued.

“Tony? That you?”

Well, damn it to hell if it wasn’t the pissant! “Yeah, Mitch, it’s me. Whassup?”

“Can you come in to work tomorrow?”

“Whaaaat? I can’t work yet! I won’t be able to work for another week, maybe two.” Or three. Maybe four.

“I know, I know. This is just some kind of paperwork deal. Take you half an hour, maybe.”

Tony breathed heavily while he thought about it. He was going out tomorrow anyhow, to First Express Bank to close that account. The bank was maybe two blocks from the Heart Coalition Building. “All right. What time?”

“One o’clock all right?”

“Sure, fine. See you then.”

T
HEY
were in Betsy’s apartment, which despite the dust and clutter retained its cozy elegance. The living room was carpeted in a deep red, with triple windows draped in chintz, some of whose flowers reflected the color of the carpet. There were standard lamps and a glass-fronted cabinet full of porcelain collectibles. There was a lamp with an angled lampshade standing behind an upholstered chair, beside which stood Betsy’s carpetbag of needlework.

Godwin sat in the chair, Jill stood beside the lamp, and Betsy half-reclined on the couch in her rumpled flannel robe. Rain tapped lightly on the windows.

They’d been talking for a while about sleuthing techniques. Betsy was saying, “Goddy, it’s important to have some purpose in mind, and to think up some of the questions you need answered to accomplish that purpose, before you to talk to Sharon’s mother—or anyone, for that matter.”

He nodded. “Okay—and I do, right? I want to find out if anyone else saw Bob Germaine smile at me, or if maybe he even winked at some other man.”

Betsy and Jill both sighed. “No, Goddy,” Jill said patiently. “You want to find out if they saw Bob Germaine at the banquet. You want to find out who, if anyone, walked with him all the way to his car. You want to find out what Bob said or did that they themselves saw or heard. You do not hint that you think Bob is gay, you let them tell you they think he was behaving gaily—” She stopped short and said, “Is that the right word,
gaily
?”

“No,” said Godwin, “but never mind, I know what you mean.”

“Okay. No trick questions, and don’t let them know the answer you want.”

“That’s right,” said Betsy. “Let the people you’re talking to answer in their own way. And if they say something that doesn’t confirm what you think happened—in fact,
especially
if it contradicts what you think happened, it’s important to listen very closely. Don’t even hint that you think they’re mistaken or lying, but do ask questions that will allow them to give you lots of details and reasons why they think it happened the way they’re describing.”

Godwin nodded again. “Okay, I got that part.”

“Good. Wherever the conversation leads, you just follow along and see where you end up. It may give you a whole new perspective on your theory because they are going where you thought they would go, only they have to get there a different way. Or you may end up some place you never dreamed of, some place where all your assumptions are proved wrong.” Betsy reflected a moment. “All this sounds complicated. But do you understand?”

Godwin shifted a bit in the comfortable chair. “I think so. The thing is, sleuthing is not what I thought it would be. You told me you just ask questions and sort through what people answer and the solution pops up out of that. But I’ve seen TV shows and movies where some detective starts out knowing who the bad guy is and is out to prove it.

Jill snorted softly. “You want to know something? There’s been exactly one television show that is close to accurate about a cop’s life:
Barney Miller.
And if you want to laugh, tell a person who works in forensics that you’ve learned a lot from
CSI
.”

Godwin grimaced, then nodded. “Okay, it’s not like on TV.”

“It’s not all wrong,” said Betsy. “Now that I’ve been sleuthing for a while, I can read what you might call the subtext of all that fiction. All this is there—it’s just not spelled out. Because it’s the boring part. If they did a TV show about a famous needlework designer, they’d leave out all the hours of pushing the needle in and pulling it out, I’m sure.”

Godwin chuckled. “They’ll never do a show like that, because if they left out the stitching, there’d only be fifteen minutes of show. What else?”

“Would anyone like a cup of tea or hot cocoa?” asked Jill.

“Me,” said Godwin promptly. “Earl Grey tea.”

“Me, too, thank you,” said Betsy. “Cocoa.”

Jill went into the kitchen.

Betsy said, “When you’re figuring out your questions, try to put them in chronological order. When did they get to the convention, did they stay at the hotel, did they have tickets to the banquet, where did they sit, like that. Take them through step-by-step.”

“Okay, but what if I want to talk about who they saw at the banquet and they want to talk about something totally different? Like the new stitch they learned in a class?”

“If it’s obvious they aren’t answering your question, politely pull them back on task, and ask it again. If they still won’t answer it, write that down. It may be important.”

“But maybe—oh, wait, I get it! If they’re evasive, there might be something they don’t want to tell me, and a serious reason for that! Well, sure, that makes sense. You even told me once you draw conclusions not just from what they say, but what they
don’t
say. You
are
brilliant!”

Betsy tried not to preen, and Jill poked her head out of the kitchen to say, “Now, let me tell you how you’ll know if someone is lying to you.”

“Oh, honey, you don’t get to be my age and gay without having about ten thousand lessons in that.” Godwin looked sad about that, but briefly. Then he smiled. “The good part is, my lie-dar works at least as well as my gaydar.”

“That’s true,” said Betsy, who had seen him shame a patron trying to return a book or needlework gadget as unused with a mere knowing glance.

Jill came back with a tray holding three steaming cups—she’d made cocoa for herself. She put the tray on the coffee table, handed the cups around, and said to Godwin, “Just to comfort my heart, how about you tell me some of the ways you know someone is lying to you.”

“Well, for example, someone’s been looking at me but now he looks away before he answers the question. Or, he leans forward and looks deep into my eyes, which he wasn’t doing before. If we’re talking and he lifts one hand and says, ‘I swear to
God
’ or ‘on my
life
’ or ‘my mother’s
grave,
’ the rest of that sentence is a lie.” Godwin’s eyes rolled upward as he thought, then he took a sip of tea and said, “If he says, ‘Would I lie to you?’ he probably will. If he says, ‘Trust me,’ especially if he touches me on the arm while looking into my eyes as he says it, I don’t. If he gets furious when I doubt his story, it’s a lie. If he suddenly gets up and walks around while telling me this part of his story, that’s because he can’t maintain eye contact while he lies. Which brings us back to the first way, doesn’t it?” He smiled at Jill. “Did I miss anything?”

“Not so far,” said Jill, hiding a smile behind her cup of cocoa.

Betsy asked, “Did you notice any of those signs in the people you were asking if they’d seen Bob Germaine flitting through under a false name?”