Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_02 (23 page)

“I'm sure there are a lot of people who feel you make a great deal of difference,” said Betsy. Then she screwed her courage to the sticking point and said, “You told me and Jill that you had never seen one of Martha's handkerchiefs, the kind with a butterfly on it, but Martha told me that you did, perhaps more than once. She said she left them behind in church several times, and that one time you brought it to her yourself and talked with her about lace-making.”

Alice threw herself back in her chair as if poleaxed, strong chin pointed at the ceiling, eyes closed. A sound almost like a snore escaped her throat. Betsy was about to panic, thinking the woman had had a stroke, when Alice abruptly flipped forward to say, “Well, I guess I am a liar! Do you know, I totally forgot about that? She's right. I did handle one of her handkerchiefs that she had left in church. I told her she should enter it in the State Fair, it was so well done. I was a little afraid to talk to her, she was a superior sort of lady who simply ruled our choir, and I was a common sort of person, and my mother once told me I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. But Martha was glad to talk lace with me. There weren't many women in town who still had that old skill.”

“Do you remember when that happened?”

“Heavens no. Probably fairly early in Martin's career, because I got less and less afraid of women like her as time went on. I guess I didn't remember it because back when people carried handkerchiefs commonly, they were the single item most often left behind. I finally set up a table in the church hall and put items people forgot on that. People will leave the oddest things behind on those pews, we once found a set of false teeth and another time a dead fish—which of course, we didn't put out to be reclaimed. There were also a lot of umbrellas and a surprising number of single overshoes.” Alice chuckled. “So it appears I did have a chance to examine the butterfly she put on the corners of her handkerchiefs. I forgot all about that until just right now.”

“But,” said Betsy, “perhaps unconsciously you remembered seeing it, and when you were working out the pattern on the
Hopkins
fragment, your unconscious brought it out as an example.”

Alice considered this, then shook her head and said slowly, “I don't think so. I do remember now looking at the lace on her handkerchiefs—she did kind of flourish them—and thinking how beautiful it was. The work was so very fine, much better than anything I could do. But I don't remember examining the lace trim on any of them with an eye to copying the pattern. I had my own patterns.”

 

Betsy went next to see Martha Winters. She found her in her kitchen, peeling potatoes. The heavenly scent of roasting chicken filled the air. “My son and his wife are coming over,” Martha said happily. “I told them how the Monday Bunch believes in me, and how you are helping, and they decided perhaps I am not so terrible after all.”

Betsy hugged her even while she hoped with all her heart that Martha's faith was not misplaced.

“I suppose you have more questions?” said Martha.

Betsy didn't want to say she was floundering, throwing herself in random directions hoping for a clue, a connection, something that would help. “A few,” she said.

“Have you learned anything?” Martha asked in a low voice.

“Well, it's possible that Trudie was murdered by the man who was her boyfriend at the time. They had a stormy relationship and were in the middle of a quarrel when this happened. He joined the army right about then.”

Martha beamed at her. “You are
so
good at this, Betsy!” she said.

“Well,” said Betsy, “the problem is, why did he murder Carl?”

“Because Carl saw him,” said Martha, surprised at her. “He saw him murder Trudie and he ran for his own life. Then all these years later, he finds out I am suspected of the murder and he comes back to testify on my behalf.”

“Did he say anything to you that might show this was what he was thinking?” asked Betsy.

“Ah ... no. As I told Sergeant Malloy, I didn't want to talk to him and pretty much hung up on him.”

“Did Carl and Trudie know each other long?”

“No, I don't think so. He might have met her at another restaurant or diner when she was waitressing there, but there wasn't any talk until just before it happened. Why he picked on Trudie, why he went all the way down to the Blue Ribbon, I can't imagine. Our dry cleaning store is five blocks from the lake, so Carl would have had to walk past the drugstore fountain and two perfectly nice cafés to get there. I don't know what possessed him, I really don't. It was as if he deliberately set out to do something crazy and break my heart in the bargain.”

Betsy thought about that but was even less able to make sense of it than Martha. Then she said, “Where was the Blue Ribbon Café in relationship to the lake? Was it near the amusement park?”

“It was part of the amusement park. The two men who managed it shared Christopher Inn, which had been made into a duplex for them and their families. The amusement park ran all along the lakeshore, from City Docks down past where the little ferris wheel is. They had a roller coaster and bumper cars, and a really nice merry-go-round, a big one with beautiful horses.”

“Martha, did you know Trudie at all? Would you have known her if you'd seen her on the street?”

Martha nodded slowly. “Probably. This habit we have of gossiping about everyone isn't new, you know. We've always pretty much kept track of one another in Excelsior. I'm sure she must have been pointed out to me. In retrospect, I wonder if she was as terrible as everyone said, because she never took any sudden little vacations or went to nurse a sick relative in another state.”

“I don't understand—oh. You mean she never went for an abortion or to have a baby. Gosh, remember when families used to do that to girls who got pregnant?”

Martha nodded. “When the father couldn't be forced to marry her, they'd send her away till it was all over, and put her baby up for adoption.”

“Times sure have changed, haven't they?”

“Oh, they'll change back, probably. Nothing works, you know. We just keep trying one thing then another and then the first thing again.”

Betsy sighed. “You're right, what we think of as progress is sometimes just the swing of a pendulum. But you say Trudie either wasn't as awful as everyone thought, or was perhaps more careful than most young women of her type. You've known Alice Skoglund for a very long time, haven't you? Did she have any quarrel with Trudie?”

Martha smiled. “I doubt if those two ever spoke more than three words to one another—and Trudie was in high school with Alice. That's funny, when you think about it. If Trudie were alive today, she'd be an old woman, like Alice.” She made a face. “Like me. Like Jess.”

Betsy said, “The older I get, the older people have to be before I think of them as old. I don't think of you as old at all.”

Martha smiled faintly, taking the compliment for what it was worth. “My grandson told me that when you think of a policeman or your doctor as young, then you're getting old. I reached that stage twenty years ago. I wish I could be of more help to you.” This last was said with genuine pain. “Ask me something that I can answer, something that can really help.”

Betsy, floundering some more, said, “That piece of needlework Jessica made for you. Can you show it to me?”

“Of course, if you like.” Martha went away and came back a minute later with a small framed object about ten by twelve inches.

Betsy took it. The pattern was a pink heart surrounded by little blue flowers—“forget-me-nots,” said Martha. Under the heart, in golden letters, was the word
Forever
. Inside the heart was
MW & CW.
The
CW
was worked in gold, the
MW
and ampersand in a green that matched the tiny stems and leaves of the forget-me-nots.

“She did Carl's initials in gold because I kept insisting he must be dead. When she gave that to me, I cried and cried, I was so touched. People had been avoiding me, not knowing what to say.” Martha sniffed. “They all thought he'd run off with Trudie, and I suppose they thought I was a little crazy, insisting it wasn't true. But I just couldn't believe he wouldn't write to me, explain where he was or at least try to justify what he'd done. So I was sure he was dead.”

“But he wasn't dead,” said Betsy.

“I know, and that puzzles me,” said Martha. “He was always sure what he was doing was right, that he had a good reason, that he could make me understand. Up to then, I always had.” She reached for the framed piece.

But Betsy stepped back out of reach, to take another, longer look. Her eye was becoming educated to the nuances of needlework. This piece was competently done, no fancy stitches, but no flubs or missed stitches. The piece wasn't matted; it went all the way to the frame, which was of some dark wood with a very narrow gold stripe on it. “I suppose she framed it herself,” said Betsy.

Martha looked at it in Betsy's hands. “Yes, I think so. We mostly did, back then. It wasn't as if it was real art.”

Betsy smiled. “You know, Diane Bolles came into my shop not long ago. She thinks needlework is valuable and hopes to sell some of it in Nightingale's, which as you know commands some stiff prices.”

“Wouldn't that be nice? I know some of us have far more pieces tucked away than we have on display. There just isn't enough wall space.”

Betsy smiled. “Diane said people should rotate their displays, because otherwise it becomes invisible.” She hid the front of Jessica's work against her chest and asked, smiling, “What color did she do your initials in?”

Martha thought. “Let's see, the heart is pink, Carl's initials are gold ... so, uh, blue, to match the flowers.”

Betsy laughed and turned the frame around. Martha laughed, too. “Diane obviously has a point,” she said.

Betsy turned it back to look some more. The
MW
&
CW
were worked in a simplified gothic style—and, she noticed, were not quite centered. And, now she held it so the weak winter sunlight beaming through Martha's kitchen window fell on it, the area around the
MW
and the ampersand was a slightly different shade of pink than the rest of the heart. Remembering her own difficulties, Betsy could guess what had happened. Jessica had gotten it wrong, torn it out, done it again, possibly gotten it wrong again. Whether after once doing it wrong or twice—or three times—she'd run out of pink. And Betsy knew now from her own bitter experience with embroidery that dye lots can vary, so that even buying the same brand and color number didn't guarantee a perfect match. And if Jessica was like Betsy, she didn't notice the difference until she'd redone the doggone section she'd frogged. And about then she saw the initials weren't centered.

And she said to herself what Betsy would have said:
To heck with this. I have a friend in pain who needs to see this more than I need to get it done perfectly.

Betsy felt a sudden kinship with Jessica. Betsy's bright red scarf had at least three errors in it. She had gone back and corrected others, but these three hadn't been discovered until Betsy was at least two inches away from them. And she just didn't have the heart or whatever it was that possessed “real” needleworkers, who would undo hundreds of stitches to correct one wrong stitch. And guess what? The scarf was just as warm as if it had been knit without errors.

Besides, if people like Jessica and Betsy decided to undo and redo until they got it right, the scarf and this touching tribute might
still
be unfinished, languishing in drawers somewhere, waiting for the needleworker to get over her frustration and take it up again.

She was suddenly aware that Martha was waiting for her to continue. “I'm sorry, I was standing here woolgathering—” Betsy chuckled. “—literally, because I was thinking about knitting. Thank you for showing this to me. It's kind of an inspiration.” She handed it back.

Martha looked at it doubtfully. “How can that be?”

“It tells me I should keep going toward my goal and not think so much of the process.”

Martha smiled. “‘Finished is better than perfect.' You'll hear that a lot from needleworkers, though most of them take it as advice, not a rule.”

“If needleworkers ruled the world, there'd be less done, but what got done would be done exceedingly well. I'll stay in touch and let you know if I find anything important or have more questions.”

 

Monday morning there were enough customers, some with complicated questions, that noon had come and gone before Betsy and Godwin knew it. Perhaps it was because the day was sunny, a continuation of Sunday afternoon. The temperature now, at one o‘clock, was forty-seven; the streets and sidewalks were wet from melting snow. “What is this, global warming?” asked Betsy.

Godwin said, “Could be. But the forecast is for much colder tomorrow.” He said this with a curious sort of satisfaction.
I think he's proud of the harsh winters they have up here,
thought Betsy.
He'll actually be disappointed if we don't have at least one blizzard before Christmas.

“How about I go get us some lunch?” said Betsy.

“Sandwich and salad for me,” said Godwin. “Thanks.”

She went next door to the sandwich shop and bought two chicken salad sandwiches. Instead of potato chips, she got a double order of a “finger salad,” made of baby carrots, celery sticks, cherry tomatoes, and rings of sweet bell peppers—no dressing, even on the side. After eating her sandwich and enough of the crunchy stuff to feel satisfied, she washed her hands and began working the counted cross-stitch pattern again.