Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_04 (23 page)

Two wait people came to tidy up the floor and table, spreading a new cloth. “If you would like something to eat,” said one—Billie, the woman with the braids wrapped around her young, freshly scrubbed face—“I'll see if the cook can make you an omelet.”

“Thank you, no,” said Carla, and Jill and Betsy shook their heads. They all stood. “I think I'll drive into Grand Marais alone,” Carla said. “In case Frank wants me to run any errands.” Her dark face pulled into a grimace. “Or bring the children something, I suppose.”

C
oming back from Grand Marais and the lengthy and tiresome completion of reports, statements, affidavits, and other paperwork, Betsy sighed and squirmed in the passenger seat.

“What's the matter?” asked Jill.

“I don't know. I just feel restless. It's late, I should be sleepy—God knows I tried, but I couldn't seem to get enough sleep; it must be the air up here or something—but now I feel like, oh, I don't know, like a long walk up the lakeshore, or even putting on those skis and heading up the river again. If I were home, I'd be cleaning out cabinets or scrubbing the bathroom tile.”

Jill asked, “Are you pregnant?”

“For heaven's sake, why do you ask that?”

“Because I had a cousin with four kids, and with every single one of them, the day before labor began, she was up all night cleaning. ‘Nest building,' she called it.”

“Humph. No, I am not even a little bit pregnant, much
less nine months gone. Say, what's that light up ahead? Like a glow on the horizon. Is there a big city north of here?” Betsy was leaning forward, looking out the windshield.

Jill immediately pulled over. “No,” she said, “it's the northern lights. Sometimes they're like that before your eyes get fully adjusted to the dark, kind of a very faint gold.” She turned on the flashers and opened the door. “Come on, let's take a walk.”

Betsy climbed eagerly out, and they walked up the shoulder of the road. It was late, dark, bitterly cold. The sky was spattered with stars. The farther they walked away from the flashing lights, the darker it got. As their eyes adjusted, more and more stars appeared. A few minutes later, the strange gold light shifted subtly, and then turned colors and began to dance.

“Listen,” whispered Jill, coming to a halt.

Betsy, walking in front, froze and looked around in alarm, fearful a wolf or moose was coming. Then she heard it, the faintest possible crackle, as of someone a mile away wadding up cellophane. “What's that?” she whispered.

“Sometimes you can hear the northern lights.”

“Aww—!” scoffed Betsy.

“No, I'm serious. It happens more often if you're up near the Arctic Circle. But it can happen here, too.”

Betsy listened some more. “Wow,” she breathed. She looked around the sky. “Look,” she said, “the Milky Way. And the Big Dipper. And Orion—he's my favorite, I don't know why. I remember the first time I saw Orion from San Diego, and it was strange to be sitting on grass, surrounded by blooming flowers, because he's the winter constellation.” She began to walk again, stamping her feet hard because they were getting cold.

“You miss San Diego?”

“Sometimes. But this”—Betsy stopped to gesture at
the black shapes of evergreens lining either side of the road, visible in the faint reflection of starlight on snow—“is amazing. It's beautiful, but so harsh, so unforgiving. How did people live up here before furnaces and Thinsulate?”

“Beats me.”

“And Naniboujou. I thought that was such a silly name when I first heard it, but now . . . Now I wish he were real, that you could court his good will with a pinch of tobacco. I'll never look at wild geese flying in formation the same way again.”

They walked a little farther, then Jill said, “We'd better start back. It's late and I'm getting cold.”

“You? I don't believe it! You love winter!”

“Yes, I do. But I'm feeling a little blue, thinking about Mr. Owen. He's been living a nightmare, and to escape it he lost both his children.”

“Yes,” said Betsy, suddenly a little sad herself, and turned to follow Jill back up the road. “Jill, what makes some people turn to murder and others not? You hear people saying, ‘No wonder that kid turned to crime, he never knew his father, his mother was a drug addict in a bad neighborhood, he went to a bad school, had nothing but bad companions.' But you hear about another kid from the same neighborhood, same school, no parents, surrounded by the same bad companions, and he somehow turns out great. Why?”

“Beats me.”

“Douglas and Elizabeth. Those two had a bad mother, but a good father, and every other advantage. Yet they did a wicked thing. Why?”

“It's not my job to know. It's not your job either. Not to find them out, or figure out why they did it. I think I'm feeling what you feel after you've solved one of these mysteries, as if you are looking into a terrible,
meaningless abyss that swallows the innocent along with the guilty.”

“Yes,” said Betsy, remembering.

“So if you still want to, call it quits. I won't try to change your mind. I suppose you can knock down that impulse to investigate for good if you keep trying.”

They were at the car. They had left it unlocked. They climbed in, Jill started the engine, turned the heater up high, shut off the flashers, and hit the headlights. The road was completely empty and she pulled out. “Shall we start for home in the morning?”

“I suppose so. No, wait a minute. You've still got the whole week off. No need for you to go back. You can run me into Grand Marais and I can catch a bus. Is there bus service from there?”

Jill laughed softly. “A bus ride all the way back to the Cities? That would be a long, serious trip, with a stop at every wide place in the road. It'll take you fourteen hours, probably. No, I'll drive you home.”

“But that wouldn't be fair to you. How about I stay on? I want to work on that rose window pattern, and I've got a lot to do. Frogging, then restitching.”

“I thought you'd quit working on it.”

“Oh, I can give it another chance, I guess. If I give it enough chances, I may get it right.”

“Stubborn, aren't you?”

“I prefer to think of it as determined. Just like I prefer to think that I'm curious, not an incorrigible snoop. Nothing wrong with being curious. And maybe, like Carla with her trame, and the geologist Parker, a little obsessed. I start wondering about things, and once I start wondering, I just have to keep going until I have the explanation.” She chuckled. “That doesn't sound like nosy Miss Marple, it sounds more like driven Hercule Poirot.”

Jill said, “It's neither. Your ability to ferret out crime
and make the perps confess is a blessing to the innocent.”

And with a rush of something like pleasure, Betsy realized Jill was right. But Betsy was right, too. She had somehow become driven by questions, unable to leave the unexplained alone. But being a blessing to the innocent—she had never seen it from that angle. She smiled to herself, then at Jill, and settled comfortably in her seat. “If I go home, I'll have to start coping with that leak in the roof, and repairing the ceiling of the shop, and finding some part-timers who aren't planning on going away for the summer. I need this break. You need it, too. The stitch-in is over, the stitchers have gone home. We'll have the whole place to ourselves tonight. Maybe all week, unless James gets his wish and the travel editor of the
New York Times
drops in. Tonight we can get what we came here for in the first place—a little peace and quiet, and a good night's sleep.”

Design Count: 42w x 42h

Design Size: 3.5 x 3.5 in, 12 Count

 

Stitch on 12-count canvas using DMC Perle Cotton #3. Design may be worked in continental stitch, or in bargello fashion using long vertical stitches.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either 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.

 

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