Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_02 (27 page)

Her head lifted. “Of course I was proud of him! He was an officer, so handsome and so brave! We were very much in love, but we'd been married only a few months before he left for duty overseas. And then, when he didn't come home, and I went on to other things, he became just that small part of my life, less than a year, and less and less significant to what I was doing. Finally, I put all his things into storage. I should do something with them; I don't have anyone to leave them to, so I don't know why I've kept them.”

“I understand the custom is, one of his friends packs his belongings up and sends them home. Was there a diary or anything like that?”

“No, just his uniforms and military records. And three medals, I remember them. But not that flag folded into a triangle, because that comes off the coffin, and Ed never had a coffin. But there was a long and kind letter full of little stories about Ed and his crew. I kept that, too.”

“Really? Any museum or historical society would be very pleased to have something like that. Historians love letters and diaries at least as much as uniforms and medals.”

“They do? Well, yes, I suppose they would. I never thought about giving Ed's things to the historical society. What a good idea. Perhaps the other families would be interested in the letter. The men were such good friends, as soldiers get to be in combat, and the stories are all about them as well. And they were all lost when the plane went down, burned to nothing. No trace was ever found, no bodies sent home to bury.”

“That's why you felt sympathy for Martha, isn't it? I mean, her not having a body to bury, either.”

Jessica showed that genuine smile that made her pretty. “You do understand, don't you? I remember dreaming that he came home and told me he'd missed the plane, he hadn't gone on that last mission. That was my favorite dream for a long time.”

“Was there a gun in the box?”

“A gun?” Jessica looked alarmed, as if the conversation had turned an unexpected corner into unfriendly territory.

Betsy smiled her warmest. “Yes, in the box your husband's friend sent. It would have been a sidearm, a government-issue semiautomatic pistol.”

Jessica's mouth pressed into a thin, disapproving line. “Oh, no. There was a what-do-you-call-it, a holster, but they don't allow guns to go by mail, it's illegal.”

“Oh, yes, of course, I should have thought of that.”

“Oh, there's something I have for you, so before I forget—” She got up and went to a glass-fronted cupboard whose bottom half was drawers. She opened a drawer and brought out a thin, clear-plastic bag. Inside it was a white crocheted angel made rigid with starch. “This is my donation for the tree.”

“Thank you.” Betsy held the bag up and twirled it very gently. “You know, my mother used to make these. I don't know what happened to the ones she gave me.”

“Perhaps I can make one just for you.”

“Perhaps you can show me how to make them—like showing someone how to fish versus giving him one?”

Jessica chuckled, a rich, pleasant sound. “Yes, of course, that would be better, wouldn't it? I've got a pattern somewhere. I'll bring it to the next Monday Bunch meeting.”

Betsy thanked her again and left.
Oh
,
Jessica, you brave liar,
she thought as she got into her car. But how can I prove it? And then she remembered something Jill had told her. If it was true, then there was actual physical evidence, something more than mere words, which could be twisted to mean anything.

A few minutes later, she drove down the narrow lane that led to Martha's house. The road looked white in her headlights, which made her think it was coated with ice, but her tires clung obediently when she braked, and she realized it was dried salt.
Didn't the Romans used to sow an enemy's fields with salt to keep him from growing food?
she thought.
How can any vegetation survive alongside the streets and highways after a whole winter of this?

But the blue spruce looked very healthy in her headlights, despite its proximity to the street. Betsy pulled into the driveway.

She rang the bell and Martha answered promptly, though she was surprised to find Betsy on her doorstep. “I thought it would be Jess,” she said.

“Oh, if your friend is coming over, I'll leave and come back some other time,” said Betsy.

“No, don't do that; she called to say you were coming to visit her, and I assumed she'd call or come over so we could talk about it.” Martha smiled. “We do talk about you, you know. Come in, come in, we're letting all the heat out standing here with the door open.”

Betsy came in and shed her coat and boots on the little tiled area. “Do you two always tell each other what's going on?”

“Pretty much,” nodded Martha. “Anytime I get something new to talk about, I call her, and she lets me know what's going on with her. Did she tell you what you wanted to know tonight?”

“I think so,” said Betsy.

“You sound hopeful. Are you actually making progress at last?” Martha's face was itself desperately hopeful.

“I think so,” Betsy repeated. “It's been really hard, trying to figure something out just from what people say, or don't say. That's why I'm here. I think you can show me something that will speak for itself.”

“I'll show you anything I have. What is it?”

“Would you be willing to take Jessica's heart out of its frame and frog some of it while I watch?”

“... Frog?”

“Pull out some of the stitches.”

“Why do you want me to do that?”

When Betsy explained, Martha, her face inexpressibly sad, went and got the needlework Jessica had given her.

Godwin came in Monday morning a few minutes late. He was positively agog with curiosity. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!” he demanded, slamming the door of the shop.

“Tell you what?” said Betsy, lifting both eyebrows and widening her eyes at him.

“That won't do, you clever wench; I heard all about it at the Waterfront Café. You went to see Sergeant Malloy Saturday night and a little later he arrested Jessica Turnquist for murder. Is that not the proper sequence of events?”

“Approximately.”

“Wait a minute.” He hung up his beautiful camel wool coat and went to sit at the library table. “Now,” he said, “begin at the beginning, and don't stop until you reach the end.”

“Don't you even want a cup of coffee?” asked someone else, and he looked toward the back of the shop, where Jill and Shelly were emerging with steaming cups.

“If you've already told them, I'm going to
die
,” said Godwin.

“No, we just got here,” said Shelly.

“Why aren't you in school?” asked Godwin.

“Field trip sponsored by the parents, who are also supervising the children,” said Shelly. “I'm off only until noon,” she added, “so let's get started. You will not believe how pleased I am to be here.” She put a cup in front of the chair at the head of the table and gestured at Betsy. “I understand you were positively brilliant,” she added. “So sit and tell us everything.”

Jill had turned back to the coffee urn and now reappeared with a cup for herself and another for Godwin. “I‘d've stopped for cookies,” she said, “but I didn't want to miss this, either.”

Betsy sat down. “It was just a whole lot of little things that kept not adding up,” she began. “If Vern murdered Trudie, where did the handkerchief come from? If Martha murdered Carl, where did she get that old, unregistered pistol? And why did it still have World War II—era bullets in it? If Carl murdered Trudie and was coming home to confess, why would someone kill him? If someone wanted that handkerchief to frame Martha, why hide it and the body on the boat? If Alice Skoglund murdered Trudie to stop the blackmail, why would she also murder Carl? I just kept going in circles, trying to decide what was and what was not important.

“One thing that didn't seem important was that a very old woman said that Carl met his mistress at the State Fair and got all greasy. Another was that Jessica's husband was an army air corps officer. But that one was very important; it was practically the key to this thing. He was the only person connected with this case who was an officer in the military, and that was important because it's officers who get issued sidearms; enlisted men get rifles. When he was killed overseas, a friend packed up his belongings and shipped them to Jessica with a nice, long letter. Jessica said she got a holster but no gun. Army-issue guns are supposed to be turned in at the end of service, but that was a rule much observed in the breach. Jessica said she'd put everything into storage long ago, and that was important, because it meant it wasn't in her house, where a visitor might come across it and steal it.

“Martha said she lost two handkerchiefs with that wonderful lace trim. One she left at the Guthrie Theatre, where it ended up as a prop. The other she lost at the State Fair. Jessica had a fried-food stand at the State Fair—that's where she and Carl got all greasy. Carl worked for Jessica there, selling battered hot dogs on a stick. Martha thought she lost that handkerchief in the pig barn, but when she came to the fair, surely she would either stop by the stand to see her husband, or if Carl wasn't working they would both stop by the stand to say hello and perhaps buy something to eat and drink. And if Martha dropped that gorgeous handkerchief by the stand, someone might have picked it up and given it to Jessica, or Jessica herself found it. In either case, she kept it.”

“Why?” asked Shelly. “Didn't she know whose it was?”

“Of course she knew,” said Betsy. “But she was having an affair with Carl and wasn't very fond of Carl's wife. She knew Martha was proud of those handkerchiefs, so it was a fun and spiteful thing to keep that handkerchief rather than give it back.”

“Now, just wait one second,” said Godwin. “Trudie worked in a café, so she got all greasy, didn't she? You took the word of a senile old woman who doesn't know Sleep-Around-Sue from a respectable widow.”

“No, she said Carl met his mistress at the State Fair and both of them got greasy. Jessica told me she and Carl had to constantly mop the floor at her stand to keep the grease under control. Dorothy isn't senile in the ordinary sense of the word; she knows plenty. Everything else she told me was true. Her son was killed on Omaha Beach during the Normandy invasion, that same son got Alice Skoglund drunk at a private gathering and took liberties with her—”

“No!” said Godwin, much edified, and Shelly's eyes gleamed at this delicious tidbit.

“Oh, I shouldn't have said that!” said Betsy, alarmed. “So if that little fact goes beyond this gathering, I will fire both of you.” And Jill looked at Shelly and Godwin with a glint in her eye that said firing might be the least of their troubles. Betsy continued, “In fact, we are going to be a whole lot nicer to Alice than we have been. She was very important to solving this case.”

“Yes, ma'm,” said Godwin meekly, and Shelly nodded, allowing the gleam to fade.

“Dorothy said Jessica's husband flew in airplanes and died in one, also true. Dorothy doesn't muddle her facts; she's just so tired of inquiries into her clarity of mind that she turns the tables on her questioners, making a joke or a riddle of their questions. While she spoke elliptically to me, she knew what she was saying and spoke only the truth.

“But,” said Betsy, “I didn't know that until I talked to Jill. And even then, even if everything else she said was true, could it really be that Carl and
Jessica
were having an affair? It would explain a whole lot if it was. But how to prove it? And then I thought about something else Jill told me, and then I remembered that cross-stitch heart Jessica gave Martha, and I crossed my fingers in hopes I was right and went to talk to Martha.”

“What did Jill tell you?” asked Shelly.

“That using metallic floss will leave a mark on fabric that only shows up after a long time. It kind of develops, like a photograph, into a gray or black mark. And when we took Martha's initials out of that fabric, there were black marks that spelled
JT
, for Jessica Turnquist. She had made that piece for Carl, not for Martha. The ‘love forever' she stitched on that project was between her and Carl, not Carl and Martha. That's when I knew Jessica murdered Trudie.”

“Now wait a second,” said Godwin. “Odell saw a man running away from the boat. Jessica wouldn't look like a man no matter how you dressed her.”

“Why was Jessica mad at Trudie?” asked Shelly.

“I‘d've murdered both of them,” said Jill.

Shelly and Godwin started at this odd confession from a law enforcement officer, but Jill only stared back. Then the three looked at Betsy to go on.

“Jessica told me she was surprised to learn how much Martha loved Carl. Carl bad-mouthed Martha to everyone, especially women he was flirting with. But I think Jessica was more surprised than average, because Carl told her he and his wife had a sham of a marriage. It's a favorite line of philanderers, more so back then when divorces were rarer. Nearly as common as ‘My wife doesn't understand me.' And it's what Carl told Jessica, along with ‘She says if I try to divorce her, she'll hire a private detective, which means it's possible your name will be dragged through the courts.' The truth is, he didn't want a divorce at all, because he was a businessman in a small town where his wife was highly thought of. If he dumped her for Jessica, they'd have to leave town and start over. Carl had a wife who, I think, he actually loved, and he had a healthy, intelligent son, and a successful business. I don't think he was willing to give all that up. But he wanted the thrill of a beautiful mistress, too.