Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_02

Table of Contents

 

 

“You know about the skeleton on the boat they raised?”

“Yes ... How dreadful for the divers, to find something like that.”

Shelly nodded. “We're involved again.”

“Who is?”

 

“The shop, Crewel World.”

“I don't understand.”

 

“They've left a big clue in our shop, and people are being asked to look at it and see if they can identify it.”

“What is it?”

 

“It's a piece of silk with lace edging, or rather a picture of it. It was found on the boat, which means it went down with it in 1949. No one has come up with anything yet, but you just watch. Of course, Betsy won't suspect you or me, because we weren't around in 1949.”

CREWEL WORLD
FRAMED IN LACE
A STITCH IN TIME
UNRAVELED SLEEVE
A MURDEROUS YARN
HANGING BY A THREAD
CUTWORK
CREWEL YULE
EMBROIDERED TRUTHS
SINS AND NEEDLES

 

 

 

 

 

PATTERNS OF MURDER

 

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,
South Africa

 

 

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

FRAMED IN LACE

 

 

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY

 

Berkley Prime Crime edition / October 1999

Copyright © 1999 by Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld.

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-49573-5

 

 

BERKLEY PRIME CRIME ®
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design
are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

I
t wasn't even Halloween, but autumn was over. Betsy sat at the little round table in the dining nook of her apartment and gazed out the back window. There was a small parking lot, with the ground beyond rising steeply through mature trees. Only yesterday the trees were ablaze with orange, red, and yellow leaves. She had planned to drive around Lake Minnetonka this weekend and take in the colors. But there had been a hard freeze last night, and now, in a light breeze, there was a Technicolor blizzard on the slope that would leave the branches bare by nightfall. Already she could see a gas station and a white clapboard house that had been hidden by foliage yesterday. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, but the weatherman on the radio had said that perhaps the temperature would break fifty by early afternoon.

Betsy, fresh from San Diego, didn't have much of a winter wardrobe. She had planned to buy winter woolens locally—Minnesota was heavily Scandinavian, and Betsy just loved their sweaters—but hadn't realized she'd need them so soon. Today she was wearing her warmest work outfit: a federal-blue cotton skirt, a bell-sleeved white blouse, and a brown felt vest with carved wooden buttons.

She looked at her watch and hastily drank the last of her tea. She put the empty cup and the plate that had held a fried egg sandwich into the sink. Sophie was already at the door of the apartment, ready to accompany her to work. The cat had a better sense of time than she did—not surprising, really. Sophie had been her sister's cat, and therefore in the business longer than Betsy had.

Like the Queen of England, Betsy “lived above the shop.” She went out the door, down the stairs, and to the obscure door into a back hallway that led to the back door of Crewel World. Sophie trundled along beside her.

It was just nine-forty, and the store opened at ten, but the back door was unlocked. Betsy froze with her hand on the knob, key in the lock. The last time she had gone through a door that should have been locked, she had found her sister's body.

Sophie made an inquiring noise, and Betsy waved a shushing hand at her while she leaned forward to listen at the door. Faint conversation. One voice, a light tenor, rose to understandability: “And I'm just so fond of magenta, it's a warm, clear color without being
quite
so simple as red.”

There was a murmur as another voice replied; but Betsy couldn't understand the words.

“That's
right!
You know, it's just
great
dealing with a customer who has a decent sense of color.”

While Betsy hadn't understood the reply, she heard the pleased note in the voice, and she smiled as she opened the door into the back room. Sophie scooted through, and she closed it behind her firmly enough to be heard in the shop.

“Oh, good, now I won't have to make change out of my own pocket,” said the tenor. “
Good
morning, Betsy!”

“Good morning, Godwin,” replied Betsy, coming into the shop and pausing automatically. Sunlight poured between the front-window displays of counted cross-stitch patterns and needlepoint projects. It lit up the counters and tables with their baskets of wool, cotton, and silk. On one wall, the big swinging doors that held painted canvases stood open just enough to call attention to themselves. Near the front door was an old dresser painted white, its dim mirror holding advertisements for conventions and classes on knitting and needlepoint. All looked in perfect order.

The customer was a medium-sized woman in a long tweed coat, and in her hands hung a sky blue drawstring plastic bag. It had Crewel World printed on it in little Xs, as if worked in cross-stitch.

“Good morning, Mrs. Schuster,” said Betsy.

“Good morning, Betsy. I was on my way to the Waterfront Café for breakfast when I saw lights on in your shop and stopped to see if I could pick up my order of magenta silk, and Godwin was kind enough to unlock the door.”

“How's the project coming?” asked Betsy, going behind the big desk that served as a checkout counter.

“Very, very well,” said Mrs. Schuster. Encouraged by the question and still pleased at Godwin's compliments, she pulled a needlepoint canvas from the bag. It was a square canvas of grapes and grape leaves, not quite abstract. The stitching was an appropriate and very competent basket weave. When finished and framed, it would hang in the office of a friend of Mrs. Schuster's, who vinted wines as a hobby. The grapes were being done in silk, the leaves were already stitched in various green wools.

“Oh, I like how it's turning out,” said Godwin, coming to look. “You were so clever to do the grapes in silk to make them shimmer.” He cocked his head. “Chalk-white wool for the background, of course.”

“Yes—of course,” said Mrs. Schuster, and Betsy shot him a grateful look. Mrs. Schuster had taken up a lot of Betsy's time discussing colors and fibers for this project and had changed her mind three times about the background.

But Betsy wasn't surprised that Mrs. Schuster was quick to take Godwin's suggestion. The young man had developed a serious talent for needlework during the two years he'd worked for Betsy's sister and now for Betsy. That he was gay only added to his reputation for selecting the right color and texture for any project.

Betsy was new in town, and not knowledgeable about needlework or about running a shop. Crewel World had been her sister's, and for her sister's sake its customers were giving her every chance to climb the steep learning curve into the intricate world of needlework.

Mrs. Schuster left with her magenta silk and enough white wool to do the background of her project. As she went up Lake Street, her breath streamed out behind her.
Brrr
, thought Betsy.
And it's not even Halloween yet.

She looked around again. The track lights were on, the front door unlocked, the needlepoint sign turned so that Open faced the street. When Mrs. Schuster had paid her bill, Betsy had put the forty dollars of startup money in the old-fashioned cash register. The hot-dust smell in the air meant Godwin had turned up the heat. Even as she turned to remind him, he was stooping to turn on the Bose radio, tuned to a classical music station. Sophie clambered up onto “her” chair, the one with a powder blue cushion that set off her white fur with the tan and gray patches perfectly. They were ready for business.

“What brought you in early?” asked Betsy.

“Oh, John was being a pissant last night, so I just went to bed early; and so I got up early, and so here I am.” John was the wealthy lawyer Godwin lived with, whose support enabled Godwin to work for slave wages at Crewel World.

“Trouble?” asked Betsy.

“Oh, nothing we haven't had before. He's so
jealous
, and really, right now I'm not giving him the least
reason
to be jealous.” Godwin tossed his head. He was a slender man, a little under medium height, and his wardrobe tended toward Calvin Klein Slim Fit jeans and silk knit shirts, though today, in honor of the season's change, he was wearing a brown-plaid shirt under a fine-woven Perry Ellis sweater with textured pinstripes. His short hair was an enhanced blond color, his eyes a guileless blue, his nose almost too perfect. He looked eighteen, though Betsy knew he would be twenty-six in December.