Thai Die (15 page)

Shelly asked Betsy, “So how old do you think it is?”

“I don’t know. It might not be very old at all. It may be just what it looked like, a worn-out piece of embroidered silk, not worth anything. But if the rag had been tossed into a chest and left alone in a dry, dark basement, it could be sixty, eighty, even a hundred years old. The really, really old silk fabrics—two-thousand-year-old silk, can you imagine?—were found in tombs in China.”

Phil said, “Come on, you think this rag you’re talking about could be two thousand years old?”

Betsy said, “Oh, no, I’m sure this isn’t that old. The photographs I saw of really old silk were just plain cloth, though they were striped in very bright colors. And there were pictures of half-rotted fragments, hard to tell what they were like when they were new, but they didn’t look like Doris’s cloth, either. I think this is much newer.”

Alice said, “Maybe it’s from the early nineteen hundreds, something an English missionary stitched while she was in Thailand.”

Betsy said, “Well, for heaven’s sake, Alice, I think you’ve put your finger on it! That could explain why it reminds me of Celtic designs. If that’s what it is, it might be worth three or four thousand dollars. Maybe more—have you seen what really old samplers sell for?”

Bershada said, “The rag I saw didn’t look anything like a sampler.”

“Did it have an alphabet on it?” asked Alice.

“No,” said Betsy.

“Well, I’ve stitched more than a few samplers in my day, and they all had alphabets on them—that’s what makes them samplers.”

Doris pulled them back on topic, saying, “But you think this is the silk that woman was after?”

“I’m willing to think so.”

“Four thousand dollars isn’t worth killing someone over,” Shelly pointed out.

Alice said, “No amount of money is worth a human life.”

Just then, the door sounded its two notes, and in came Gary Woodward, teen knitter. He had a Crewel World bag in one hand and was smiling the way a scholar does when school is unexpectedly out.

“What’s up, Gary?” Betsy asked.

Gary’s smile vanished into an apologetic look. “Well, it’s this skein of yarn I bought on Saturday.” Gary took it out of the bag, a bright, furry, shimmery mass in red-orange and maroon, appropriately called Flame. “I bought two. The other one’s fine, but this one—” He pried it apart a little and showed Betsy a bite-sized fragment of a chocolate bar melting its way into the delicate filaments of the yarn.

“Oh, gosh,” said Betsy. “Well, go get another one—if there is one.”

“I hope so, I already started the hat with my first skein.”

The people at the table watched him wander off, and when they judged him out of earshot they leaned in and took up the conversation again.

Betsy said, “Maybe Shelly’s right, the dead woman was insane, asking for a piece of Thai silk she had already taken from Doris’s apartment. But on the other hand, I have a piece of old silk fabric. Doris brought it home from Thailand, and no amount of searching in her apartment would have found it.”

Bershada said, “Well, all right, maybe that thing is what she was after. But even a hundred-year-old piece of silk can’t be worth much when it’s a mess like that one was. I’ve seen those expensive samplers, and they’re in beautiful condition.”

“Yes, of course you’re right. But I’ve been researching how to clean and restore it.”

“Will that make it valuable?” asked Alice.

“Maybe.”

Phil said, “I think the biggest mystery of this whole thing is, how did Wendy know where we were?
We
didn’t know we were staying at the March Hare until we got there!”

“I knew almost as soon as you did,” said Betsy. “Doris, you sent me an e-mail, remember?”

“Yes, that’s right.” She looked across the table at Betsy and asked, not quite succeeding in keeping the accusing tone from her voice, “Who did you tell?”

“No one.”

“Oh, but you must have!” declared Alice.

“No, not anyone!” said Betsy, her eyes flashing for an instant. “I didn’t talk about it on the phone, or send an e-mail, or forward the e-mail Doris sent me. So unless there’s a psychic out there somewhere reading my mind, I am not the source that told the dead woman you were staying at the March Hare in St. Peter.”

“Well, isn’t that dandy,” said Phil. “
Someone
must have told her. How else did Wendy Applegate find out? Either she read Dorie’s e-mail, or someone told her about it.” He looked around at the other women. “Did any of you make a phone call from St. Peter?”

They shook their heads.

“I didn’t, either,” said Phil.

“Heidi,” declared Bershada. “It must’ve been Heidi.”

“Why on earth,” asked Phil, “would Heidi call someone and tell her Dorie was staying there?”

“Did any of you talk with Heidi at all?” asked Betsy.

“We all did,” said Shelly. “After supper we sat in the library—it’s a beautiful room, with a bay window almost as big as the whole wall, and lots of books, and a fireplace. We talked to her about our trip to Amboy, and that set off some talk about stitching. Heidi crochets and she brought out a doily she’s been working on. I showed off the mohair tam I bought, and Doris said she’d been to Thailand and had brought home some silk floss.”

“Doris, did you mention the silk you bought in Thailand?” asked Betsy.

“No. I didn’t even talk about my trip, or the silk I bought, or the stone Buddha and the rag it was wrapped in. In fact, until you mentioned it just now, I think I’d pretty much forgotten about it.”

“So if the rag is this old silk the woman was after, how did Heidi know about it?” asked Bershada, interestedly, and Alice nodded. They had enormous respect for Betsy’s deductive powers.

“One of you must have told her,” said Betsy.

But since none of them had known the old rag was silk, they were able to deny that.

“But someone must have led that woman I killed to the March Hare!” said Doris.

“Stop saying that like you’re a murderer!” said Phil sharply. “I told you it was self-defense! And, anyway, it might’ve been me who gave her that final push!” She bowed her head under the rebuke in his voice, and he reached to touch her shoulder in apology.

“ ‘Murderer’?” Gary had detoured from the checkout desk to the library table, where they were all sitting. “Who got killed? Ms. Valentine, I don’t believe you could really kill someone. Betsy, are you going to get mixed up in another mystery?”

Gary had once played a key role in solving a computer mystery for Betsy.

“It’s a mystery but not a murder, Gary,” replied Betsy. “It was a terrible accident. A woman fell down some stairs.”

“But the police think it was Doris who pushed her down the stairs,” said Alice, ever ready with an uncomfortable detail.

“Wendy Applegate,” said Shelly, thinking out loud. “I told the police I had never heard of her, but now I have this feeling I’ve heard that name somewhere.”

“Where?” demanded Phil.

She thought for a moment, then raised her hands, palms up. “Sorry, but I just don’t know. It could’ve been some gossip in the teachers’ lounge.” She frowned, then shook her head, unable to retrieve the information. “I’ll Google her.”

Doris said, “I know who she is.”

“
What
?” exclaimed Shelly. “Did you tell that detective in St. Peter?”

Doris frowned. “I told him I thought her name was familiar. I was upset, I couldn’t remember.”

“We were all pretty upset,” said Phil, shaking his head sadly.

“Well, who is she?” asked Shelly.

Doris said, “She went with Carmen Diamond to Thailand. She and another woman. I think her name was Linda, or maybe Lana.”

Shelly exclaimed, “
That’s
why I sort of remember! I met Carmen at a teachers’ conference last year and we went out for coffee. She told me about her trip to Thailand with two friends.” She looked at Doris. “It was kind of fun to learn that we have a friend in common.”

Betsy tapped her lips with a forefinger. Was it important that Wendy had been to Thailand? With Doris’s friend Carmen?

Alice began, “But why would someone break into Doris’s apartment—”

“She didn’t break in,” interrupted Doris in a pained voice. “I never lock my apartment door. I mean, I never used to.”

“I never did, either,” said Betsy firmly. “People in Excelsior usually don’t, or didn’t until this got into the news. Excelsior is the kind of town where you didn’t think you had to. Mayberry of the North.” That was a title Betsy herself had given Excelsior.

“I heard that you got burglarized,” said Gary. “What was it they took?”

“Her best silk panel, and some jewelry, and her laptop,” said Phil.

“They took your laptop?” Typically, Gary was far more interested in a computer than silk, or even jewels. “Wow. What kind was it? You canceled your e-mail account, I hope.”

Doris said, “It was an old Dell. And no, not yet. In fact, I used it yesterday evening to send an e-mail to Betsy, telling her where we were.”

Gary stared at her. “And you’re wondering how this woman found out where you were?
You
told her!”

“No, I didn’t! I only told Betsy!”

Gary resorted to very basic language. “When you used your account, the person who stole your laptop could read your e-mail.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” said Betsy. “
I
knew that!”

Gary explained to a still-puzzled Doris, “All they’d have to do is log on—if you stored your password, of course.”

“Stored . . . Oh, you mean, so I didn’t have to type it in every time I logged on? Yes, I did that. Doesn’t everyone? But I used someone else’s computer!”

“But you used your own e-mail address, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Doris. “I already told you that.”

“Oh, honey,” Bershada said, “I’ve done that before and then seen the e-mail on my own computer. It saves it to your account, and your account is on your computer.”

Doris stared at her, wide-eyed. “Oh my God, then this is
all
my fault! I wrote Betsy where we were. I even told her my room was the little one in back, overlooking the lilac hedge. That’s how Wendy knew which door to open. Then I fought with her and pushed her—” She stopped before Phil could rebuke her again.

There was a profound silence for a few moments.

“Betsy, I’m sorry,” said Alice, sounding penitent.

“So am I,” said Doris, wretchedly.

“That’s all right, really,” said Betsy, as if it were of no importance—but that was because she was thinking. She nodded to herself as she came to a conclusion. “You know what this means, then. This
proves
the person who burglarized your apartment is the dead woman. Because otherwise, how did she read that e-mail off your laptop?”

“Well, okay, that’s true,” said Doris dully.

“Well, then, don’t you see? You’re safe.”

“Safe?” said Doris, her head coming around.

“You see, Mr. Fitzwilliam’s shop was searched, and he was killed. Then your apartment was searched, and the person who did that came after you . . .” She moved her hand, gesturing at her deduction.

“Ah,” said Alice, “but now the person who did those things is dead herself.”

Doris sighed as if in relief, choked, and burst into strange, awful laughter.

Twelve

BETSY was up to her eyebrows in bookkeeping when someone knocked on her door—and it wasn’t a gentle knock, but a loud thumping that made her hands jump on the keys, turning 178 into 194784.

Betsy deleted the gibberish while shouting, “All right, I’m coming!”

Greatly annoyed, she hustled to open it.

Doris was standing there in slippers, pink corduroy trousers, and an oversized gray sweatshirt. Her eyes were wide with alarm.

“What’s the matter?” asked Betsy, her anger and indignation replaced by concern.

“Lena Olson’s dead.”

“Oh, no!” Betsy gasped. “What happened?”

“Suicide.”

“Oh, I don’t believe it! Come in, come in!” Betsy led the way into her living room. “How did it happen? Are they sure?”

Doris went to the couch and sat down. She put her hands over her face and said, in a muffled voice, “The police say so. She was found in her car in the garage of her house.”

Betsy said, “How awful! She just bought that beautiful Lee needlepoint canvas. She was so excited about getting it at last. Do they know why? Did she leave a note?”

“No. When I heard about it, I thought it might have something to do with this Thai silk mess.”

“What could . . . Oh my God.”

“What?” asked Doris.

“Lena Olson—you said the third woman’s name was Lana or Linda. Lena Olson was the third woman on that trip to Thailand, she went with Wendy Applegate and Carmen Diamond. Right?”

“Yes, that’s right. The police have her name. They must’ve gone to talk to her. And if she was helping Wendy with whatever she was up to, then she—Lena—might have panicked. I called over there a little while ago, I wanted to talk to her, to see if she knew about Wendy. Her husband answered the phone and he was crying, I could tell.”