Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_01 (3 page)

Margot smiled and preened a little, but said nothing. She had cut a blank canvas to the right size; it was on the table beside the horse, the olive-green skein on it. She put the blue silks beside the green.

But the creamy gold of the mane was harder to match. It was an odd color, not cream, not yellow, not gold. Nothing on her racks came close enough. She closed her eyes, thinking, then said, “I'm going upstairs for a minute.”

Shelly waved assent and noticed that Sophie raised her head at the sound of the back door opening. Was it suppertime already? Shelly chuckled; Sophie was fat and cosseted now, but she had a long memory and was determined never to miss a meal again.

Margot was back in three minutes, holding one partly used and two whole skeins of pale gold silk aloft. “I knew I had some left over!” she cheered. She gave Sophie a brisk rub just to share the joy. Sophie raised her rump and her bushy, tan-and-gray tail and purred ecstatically.

Shelly laughed. “You and Sophie are so easy to make happy!” she said.

“If I had gone up there and not found this, we'd all be singing another song,” said Margot, but pleasantly, because she had gone up and found it. She put the golden skeins beside the blue on the canvas. “Now we need chalk white for the legs and saddle.” She went to the silk rack and began examining the whites.

 

Highway 7 was a divided highway, mostly under repair. Betsy wove her way among the white and orange pylons, concentrating fiercely in order not to switch lanes in the wrong direction and end up facing an oncoming truck. At the same time she was looking for a sign—and there it was: EXCELSIOR, with a warning that it was a left exit. Betsy followed the lane, which led up and over the highway and a railroad bridge. Then there was a thicket of high bushes, a red apartment building, and she pulled up to a stop sign marking an asterisk of intersections.

Ahead were a little post office and the tree-shaded clapboard houses of a small town. Atop a steep hill on her left was a multiroofed Victorian house. A sign said it was the Christopher Inn Bed-and-Breakfast.

On the right was a parking lot with a small carnival Ferns wheel in it, though no other rides were visible.

A block later, at Water Street, was another stop sign. She was supposed to turn here, but which way? To the left the street was lined with old-fashioned, false-front brick stores; to the right, a block away, was a big blue lake with sailboats on it. Toward the lake, that's what the directions said. She turned right.

Just short of the lake was Lake Street—yes, that checked. A bar and grill with a wharf theme marked the comer. HASKELL'S, said the sign, which also checked. Betsy turned right. Two blocks later the lake disappeared behind a sprawling apartment complex of gray and white clapboards. She pulled over across the street from it, in front of an old, two-story, dark redbrick building. The middle one of the three shops had a pastel-colored sign hanging over the door: CREWEL WORLD, the letters done as if cross-stitched in various colors. From the D came an out-sized needle pulling yarn in a matching color. She had arrived.

 

 

Something made Margot glance up as a car pulled to the curb. It was an older white hatchback, thickly layered with road dust, a woman driving. Margot had a feeling the license plates on it would be Californian.

Shelly said, “Is that her? Is that her?”

But Margot was on her way to the door, and didn't answer, because what if it wasn't? She opened it and watched the woman climb tiredly out on the driver's side. She was about five-three, plumper than Margot remembered, her brown hair well streaked with gray. She was wearing jeans and an ancient green sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off above the elbow.

And no glasses.

“Betsy, how can you drive without your glasses?” she scolded before she could stop herself.

“Contact lenses, of course,” replied Betsy, defense at hand, as usual. “Oh, Margot, I am so happy to see you!” She came blundering up onto the sidewalk, blinking away tears, to enter her sister's welcoming embrace.

 

An hour later Betsy was in Margot's apartment. It was a nice place, with proportions at once unfamiliar and cozy. The rooms were small, with low ceilings. In an efficient space were two bedrooms and bath, living room, and kitchen. A dining area off the kitchen was too small to be considered a separate room, but it was lit by a window that overlooked a small parking lot behind the building. If Betsy cared to lean sideways, she could see her weary old car pulled up under a lilac bush. Betsy was weary herself, but at the same time wound up tight, her body still swaying to the remembered movements of her car on the highway, her ears a little stopped up.

Last night, in a cheap motel in Omaha, she had been thinking of the ancient fable of the grasshopper and the ant. The prudent ant worked all summer, storing up seeds and dried fruit against the coming winter, while the grasshopper played in the sun. Then winter arrived and the grasshopper came knocking on the ant's door, hoping for shelter. The ant had turned the grasshopper away.

Margot had invited Betsy to come, but in that motel Betsy had worried that her sister might think of her as a grasshopper. What if Margot was critical, or worse, condescending? Betsy wouldn't put up with that. Maybe she should just call tomorrow and say she'd changed her mind, she was going to Chicago.

But Betsy had finished her trip to Minnesota and Margot had indeed seemed very glad to see her. On the other hand, this apartment wasn't exactly the big fancy house Margot used to live in, back when she was married to Aaron Berglund. Betsy had thought Margot had been left a wealthy widow, but apparently not. Did the shop make enough for Betsy to have a lengthy free ride? Maybe she'd better look for a job pretty soon.

Still, “I hope you're planning on a nice, long stay,” Margot had said down in the shop, right in front of a witness, a woman with long hair in a knot. Sally was her name, or was it Shelly? Whoever, she unashamedly eavesdropped on everything the sisters said to one another. Margot had finally noticed it was making Betsy uncomfortable, and all three unloaded the car, carrying mismatched suitcases up the stairs.

Margot had given her a quick tour of the apartment, told her to help herself to anything in the kitchen, and went back to work. Betsy had tried lying down on the comfortable bed in the guest room to take a nap, but was too wound up to sleep. She had wandered the apartment awhile, then gone to the refrigerator—eating when she couldn't think of anything else to do was her worst fault—and poured herself a glass of milk, then took a couple of peanut-butter cookies from a cookie jar shaped like a pig—a hint, obviously, but it didn't stop her.

Now she sat at the little table in the dining alcove, trying not to think too much about the suitcases waiting to be unpacked.

The building was only two stories high, so there were no apartments overhead. Margot's apartment took up one end of the second floor, with a stairwell between it and the other apartments. Between its location and the old-fashioned solidness of the building, it was very quiet up here. Of course, it was a quiet little town, too; no fire and police sirens, no traffic's roar. Even the lake's little wavelets could hardly approach the sussurant crash of the Pacific. Oh, dear, she thought as her eyes began to sting, was she going to miss the ocean, too?

No, no, she'd be just fine. She was here, in Excelsior, Minnesota, a nice little town, and welcome. She finished the milk and put one uneaten cookie back in the jar, put the glass into the sink, and as she did noticed the grubbiness of her hands. She went into the bathroom to wash, but when she looked at herself in the mirror, she changed her mind. Just washing her hands and face wasn't going to do.

The tub was a big old-fashioned porcelain one, with claw feet. Real porcelain tubs held the heat much better than fiberglass ones and were therefore great for long soaks. A long soak suddenly seemed very desirable. And here was a jug of bubble bath, herbal-scented, just waiting. So she filled the tub, peeled off her clothes, and sank gratefully into the bubbles. She'd forgotten to go get a paperback, but that was all right; she just closed her eyes and fell into a kind of doze. When she stirred herself half an hour later, and rinsed out her hair, and toweled off with one of the big, thirsty bath towels, she felt a whole lot better.

She had put on fresh clothes and was halfway unpacked when she heard someone come in. “I'm home!” came Margot's voice.

Betsy found Margot in the kitchen. “Early closing tonight,” she said. She was measuring out a portion of lams Less Active for Sophie as the cat watched anxiously.

“Can I help with supper?” asked Betsy.

“No, the kitchen's too small, especially with Sophie in it, too. You sit down and we'll talk.”

So Betsy sat at the round table in the dining nook and said, “How's business?”

“Not bad. Would you like to help out in the shop? With school starting, I'll need to replace Shelly.”

“Sure. But—um—I mean—” Because she needed a salary.

“I pay six-ten an hour for beginners. Plus room and board, special for you.” Margot, gathering things from the refrigerator, chuckled.

“Can you afford to do that?”

“Of course I can. You don't have to worry about that at all.” Margot looked around the door, face as surprised as her voice.

“I don't want to be a burden.”

“You're not a burden, and even if you were a burden, you wouldn't be a burden, okay?”

“Thanks. When do I start?”

“How about Monday? That will give you tomorrow and the weekend to get settled in.”

Supper was a tuna salad made with every kind of lettuce but iceberg, a little sweet onion only on Betsy's salad—“I remember you like onions,” Margot said—a sprinkle of herbs, four large croutons, and a dressing that was mostly a flavored vinegar with just a smidge of olive oil. It came with a hot loaf of crusty bread that would have been even better with butter instead of a “lite” margarine that was mostly air and water.

Afterward, over an herbal tea that was supposed to encourage the body to shed fat—Betsy was beginning to see how Margot stayed so trim—Margot said, “Would you like to take a walk and get a look at our city?”

Betsy grinned. “City?”

“It's a legalism. The county passed a law years back that made all the little towns out here incorporate as cities or fold up. Wait till you drive through Navarre, which you must do without blinking or you'll miss it, but it's a city, too. Anyway, come on, I'll show you our famous Lake Minnetonka.”

They went back to the comer of Lake and Water, where the lakeshore was marked by small wooden wharves. The sun was bright, but already the sun was well on its southward path, and their shadows pointed north as well as east. Large square-built excursion boats were tied up here, along with one odd little boat whose shape reminded Betsy of an old-fashioned streetcar.

“The
Minnehaha
.” Margot nodded. “Built in 1906, sunk in the lake back in 1926, then raised and restored a few years ago. Used to be owned by the public transit company, which explains its shape. It runs on weekends between here and Wayzata.”

“Minnetonka, Minnehaha? Do I see a pattern?”

“Indeed you do. The poem ‘Hiawatha' was set in Minnesota and was very popular when things were getting named around here.”

“Ah.”

Beyond the wharves, the lakeshore was marked by a park, where some of the younger maple trees showed traces of orange. Apparently autumn arrived in September here. On their left, away from the lake, the ground swooped up, and was topped by grand old houses with big porches. How pleasant it must be to sit up there and watch the lake in all its moods.

The lake drew away, the park enlarged and grew a hill of its own, marked with big trees, and Lake Street ended at a tennis court. The sisters turned left and Betsy found she was now on
West
Lake Street. Well, okay; the lake itself also turned the comer, she could see it through the trees.

Here the houses were smaller, but still prosperous. None were new but all were in excellent repair, with neatly kept lawns. Some even had picket fences, and from one big tree hung a tire swing.

It was all so charmingly sweet, Betsy remarked, “What is this place, Mayberry-of-the-North?”

Margot laughed. “I'll have to repeat that next time I'm trying to get the city council to understand why it's important we fight to preserve the amenities of Excelsior.”

They turned left at the next corner, and there was a quaint little church across the street, with a new, large, and modern church hall attached by a covered walk. “Trinity Episcopal,” said Margot. “That's where I go.”

“Uh-huh,” said Betsy, and pointed to a window on a house on her side of the street where a large brown tabby sat watching them suspiciously. “That cat looks almost as big as Sophie.” She didn't want to start a discussion of churchgoing, because she almost never went anymore.

Safely past the church, Margot continued with her tour. “If you look across the parking lot,” she said, pointing, “you can see the library, the fire department, and our little city hall on the other side.”

Betsy, squinting, nodded. “I see the sign that says CITY HALL,” she said, “but it seems to be pointing to the same building that says FIRE DEPARTMENT.”

“It is,” said Margot. “City Hall is in the basement of the fire department building. I voted against them moving into a building of their own,” she added. “Keeps them modest.”

They walked to the comer, and found themselves in the heart of the miniature “downtown” of Excelsior. To the left was the movie theater, pet shop, and bookstore, with a gift shop on the comer. Margot turned right and Betsy went with her, past the hardware store, a toy shop, an antique store, and so on. The stores were small, in good repair, apparently prosperous. Delicious smells came from the pizza-by-the-slice shop and the bakery. The wallpaper-and-paint store was having a sale. An art-supply store up the way and across the street had its side painted with a mural of a small cottage and a pond covered with water lilies. In the mural, an artist had set up a large canvas and was painting the water lilies. Betsy saw it and started to laugh. “Monet, I love it!” she said.