Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_04

by Unraveled Sleeve

  Betsy nodded, remembering how she had decided to quit the day she found herself standing outside in a chill downpour, damp and shivering, shackled to Mistress Nicotine. How much worse it would be in this frigid climate! But she did not say what a friend always said, “Smokers of the world, unite! Throw off your chains!” Because it was no laughing matter and teasing only made things worse.

  So instead, Betsy said, “I can’t get over that dining room.”

  “Yes, it’s just amazing, isn’t it?” The woman picked up her fabric—a cotton evenweave, Betsy noted. “I first came here twenty-seven years ago, on my honeymoon—” She bridled just a little, obviously thinking Betsy would be surprised to learn she was old enough to have been married twenty-seven years ago.

  So Betsy politely said, “You don’t look old enough to have been married twenty-seven years,” though that was not true. Sunlight can be cruel, and it clearly showed the tiny lines of a woman in her midforties, at least. Face lifted, too, Betsy thought, noting the oddly placed creases in the woman’s cheeks when she smiled. Though very thin people’s faces creased differently when they smiled.

  “Oh, yes, I have two grown-up children. My daughter still lives at home, but my son is out of college now and looking to work in environmental protection. Do you have children?”

  “No,” said Betsy. “We tried, but it turned out I couldn’t get pregnant.”

  “How sad. They do give you a link to the future, I think. What are you working on?”

  “A sweater. I’ve learned to like all kinds of needlework, but knitting I find most soothing.”

  “I like counted cross-stitch best for relaxation. It takes my mind away from my troubles.”

  As if reminded, the woman stopped stitching to look a little downcast. Impulsively Betsy asked, “Is it something you want to talk about?”

  “Well, people will see us together, I suppose. And wonder. You see, my husband and I are divorced, but we’re trying to get back together. Since we honeymooned here…” She blushed and looked away, out the window. Betsy smiled; that someone less than eighty years old could actually blush when mentioning her honeymoon was as charming as it was silly. “I wonder…” The woman paused again. “This is just too stupid,” she said, drawing a deep breath. She put her stitching away with swift efficiency as she murmured very quietly to herself, “I must go get Eddie, then.” And she stood and strode out.

  Betsy frowned after her. Who was Eddie? Oh, of course, her ex-husband. And Betsy thought she recognized the lure of a nicotine fix, too. Probably wants to borrow a cigarette from him, or ask him to join her in one. Poor thing, Betsy thought, remembering her own struggle against the habit. Maybe that’s how she stays so thin. Though the woman didn’t look just fashionably slender, she looked emaciated. Perhaps she was ill. Maybe this attempt to reconcile was triggered by a serious illness, perhaps something caused by smoking. Betsy tried to think who she knew, or should know, who was ill with cancer or emphysema. But no name came to her, perhaps because she was still a little sleepy.

  She looked down at her knitting and picked up her needles. Was the next stitch knit or purl? Knit. She set off again on the cuff, but the cozy silence made it difficult to concentrate. Not that it was hard, or anything, just knit one, purl one, knit one, purl… No good. Yawning, she let her hands descend into her lap.

  This lounge was so beautiful. Beams rising between the pairs of windows leaned gently inward, leading the eyes up, to where the ceiling beams were painted the same color as the walls. So long as her head was already leaning back, she let it fall against the back of the couch. Her eyes closed…

  She struggled awake. She’d been having a dream about a sinister blond woman who wanted her to have a cigarette, and for a moment or two she wasn’t sure she was awake yet. The couch was unfamiliar. She was in a long room full of odd shadows.

  The dream about the thin blond woman had been set in a long room full of sunlight. Or had there really been a woman? The dream had been in two parts, she thought, and only in the second was the woman sinister.

  And she actually was in a long room. But she was alone, and it was dusk outside. Was this part three of the dream?

  Her nose twitched. No, the room was real, she was at Naniboujou Lodge, and there were some very delicious smells coming from the dining room, accompanied by the sound of quiet talk and the clinking of silverware on porcelain.

  She shoved her knitting into her bag, but left the bag on the floor. Was Jill eating dinner without her? She got clumsily to her feet and went to the door at the end of the room, walked into the dining room, and paused to look around. There was a small crowd of perhaps thirty or thirty-five women and three men seated at the tables, eating, talking, laughing. The stitchers-in had arrived. But none was Jill.

  Betsy turned, went past a long and broad counter, behind which was an old-fashioned circular red velvet couch with a red velvet pillar sticking up out of its middle, and into the lobby.

  There was no one at the check-in desk. A wooden staircase, not wide, with a carpet runner, stood ahead of her. A stylized bird, a crow or an eagle, was carved on its finial post. She remembered that bird from when she had come down last time. Betsy went up. Her room, she remembered, was at the end of the corridor near the staircase, its door set at an angle. She came to the top of the stairs and paused. The stairs turned completely around, going up, emptying into a short hallway, and she had to wait till her head turned itself back around again. Through there was the corridor, and there was the angled door.

  Her key was in her pocket, right? Right. Funny Jill hadn’t come down, if it was dinnertime. This was one of these package deals, the meals included in the price of the weekend, so missing a meal wouldn’t save her any money. Maybe she was taking a nap.

  The dumb key wouldn’t turn in the lock. Betsy pulled it out and turned the knob—and the door opened. There was no light on in the room, but there seemed to be someone on the bed. “Jill?” said Betsy, but softly, in case Jill was asleep.

  Betsy found the light switch, and a lamp came on. There was, in fact, someone on top of the comforter, but it was the thin blond woman. Her complexion was blotchy and her lips were blue. And she didn’t seem to be breathing.

  The room was small. In three steps, Betsy was beside the bed. She looked around. The suitcases had been put away, though something dark was draped across a chair. There was no one in the room.

  Except for the woman on the bed. Betsy reached out to touch her.

  No pulse, no breath, skin eerily cool. This was too dreadful, this was nightmarish.

  Betsy turned and blundered out, yanking the door closed behind her. She more stumbled than ran down the twisting stairs. There was still no one behind the counter in the lobby. What kind of place was this, where the front desk was unmanned and people came to die on other people’s beds?

  The feeling of unreality was so strong that Betsy didn’t want to run into the dining room, yelling about a dead woman. A dark-haried man in a white shirt and navy trousers was standing at a lectern halfway down the room. He looked a lot like the friendly clerk who had been behind the check-in counter earlier. Betsy hurried to him to say in an urgent undertone, “There is the body of a dead woman on the bed in my room.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then said, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know. I talked to her earlier, but I don’t think she told me her name. She’s here for the stitch-in, I know that.”

  “What room are you in?”

  Betsy couldn’t remember, but thought of her key. She brought it out. “Twenty,” she said, reading the number off it.

  The man said, “Come with me,” looked around, and started toward the fireplace end of the room. There, he took the elbow of a young wait person with braids wrapped around her head and a coffeepot in each hand and said in a low voice, “Billie, I have to go with this woman to her room. Take over for me?”

  “Sure.�
�

  Since they were at the fireplace end, he went out the door that let onto a short passageway, and up the back stairs she suddenly remembered she had come down originally. He didn’t ask for her key, but used a pass key of his own to open the door. Betsy, unwilling to see that still face again, hung back.

  “Hello?” said the man.

  And Betsy heard a sleepy reply, “Hello?”

  Betsy peered around the man’s elbow to see a figure sitting up on the bed. It was Jill.

  4

  Jill struggled to awaken. Recognizing the man’s voice, she asked, “What’s wrong, James?”

  His voice was strained. “I—I’m not sure, Ms. Cross. Your friend said—”

  “Betsy?” Jill said sharply. “Where is she?” She realized it was dark out. “Say, what time is it?”

  “Seven thirty-five,” said James.

  “I’m right here,” came Betsy’s voice from behind James. “But, I don’t understand. I came up here just two minutes ago and there was a dead woman on the bed.”

  “What?” Jill sat the rest of the way up. “Come in, come in. What happened?”

  James went to the fireplace to give Betsy room to come in. He turned and looked with Jill at Betsy for an explanation.

  But Betsy didn’t have one. Not a coherent one, anyway. “I was in the lounge knitting, and this woman came in and sat down across from me. She was very pretty but very thin. Blond hair, curly, cut short. She had a blue and white sweater, one of those Scandinavian sweaters.” She gestured at her shoulders, describing the starburst pattern with her fingers.

  Standing just inside the doorway, Betsy looked bewildered. She was wearing what she’d worn on the trip up, an old blue sweatshirt one size too large; and leggings, unflattering on her short, plump figure. Betsy looked anything but commanding normally, and now she looked ruffled and scared.

  But she didn’t lie.

  Jill said, “Go on.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on. I was asleep, you see, then I came up here to find you, because it’s dinnertime, and instead I saw her, on this bed, and she was dead. So I ran back downstairs to tell someone, and James came up with me, only it was you on the bed.”

  Jill looked over at James to see if he could shed more light on Betsy’s story.

  He shook his head. “No one matching that description has checked in while I was on the desk—and I’m the only one on the desk this weekend.” Trying to be helpful, he asked, “What time did you see her in the lounge, Ms. Devonshire?”

  Betsy shrugged helplessly. “I’m not sure. I came down there right after we got our luggage up to our room—”

  “That was a little after three,” Jill put in.

  Betsy continued. “I brought my knitting down, but I dozed off, and this woman spoke to me, woke me up. It was still daylight, the sun was shining on her hair, I remember how it shone in the sun. We talked just a little while. She said she was here for the stitch-in and to reconcile with her ex-husband. Then she said she wanted to meet him for a cigarette and went out, and I went back to sleep, and when I woke up it was dark.”

  “You fell back asleep?”

  Betsy nodded. “I had a dream about her, then I woke up again, and I wondered if you’d come down to eat without finding me. You weren’t in the dining room, so I went up to our room. Only when I opened the door there she was, that same thin woman, dead.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t me you saw? It was dark after all,” said Jill.

  “Oh, yes. I turned the light on, and I touched her. Her lips were blue, and she wasn’t breathing at all, and I couldn’t find a pulse. I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t think what she was doing in our room, or where you’d gotten to. I came right down and got you”—Betsy nodded toward James—“and you brought me up, only it was Jill asleep on the bed.”

  Betsy looked as if she didn’t expect to be believed, as if she wasn’t sure of her story herself.

  “So this woman appeared to you between naps,” said Jill.

  “Yes,” agreed Betsy reluctantly. “But it wasn’t a dream, Jill. I mean, dreams are kind of vague, and this woman wasn’t vague, not the first time. The pattern of that sweater, one of those starburst kind, I could draw it for you, you know how I’m getting about knitting patterns. And the sweater had fancy pewter fasteners, not buttons. You don’t dream details like that.”

  “No, I guess not.” Jill scooted to the edge of the bed and hung her legs over. She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips, trying to pull her thoughts together. She said, “You’re sure you didn’t go to some other room by mistake?”

  “No—well, there’s only one room right at the top of the stairs, at an angle, not flat along the wall, right? With a fireplace?”

  “That’s right,” said James. “But here we are, in your room, and there’s no dead body in here, thank God. I don’t know what else to say. Except that I’ve got to get back. You’d better come down soon, if you want to eat.”

  “We’ll be right down,” said Jill. “Just let me wash my face.”

  A dash of cold water helped. Jill came out of the bathroom to find Betsy, looking half ashamed, waiting by the window.

  “Lighten up on yourself, Betsy,” Jill said. “Everyone has dreams that seem real. I’ve done it myself. And this is just another one of the kind of dreams you’ve been telling me about. More realistic than the others, but your unconscious had to get it right at least once, right? Come on, let’s see if a hot meal makes you feel better.”

  Betsy said, as they went out the door, “Is James related to the check-in clerk? They look a lot alike.”

  Jill laughed. “They are the same person. He’s James Ramsey. He and his wife Ramona own this place. Very fine people.”

  Most of the other guests had either finished or were eating dessert by the time they got down, so they sat alone at one of the small tables along the outside wall. Heavy sheets of clear plastic were hung on the French doors to keep out the cold.

  “The idea was,” said Jill, “to open these doors and set up tables under an awning along this wall and serve food and drinks out there—in the summer, of course.”

  “But they never did that?” asked Betsy.

  “I don’t think so. Well, maybe the original owners did. This place began life as a very large and exclusive private club. People like Ring Lardner and Babe Ruth signed up as members. It opened in July, 1929.” Jill paused, one pale eyebrow raised just a bit.

  Betsy frowned at her, then said, “Oh! Of course, October 1929, the Crash, followed by the Depression.”

  Jill nodded. “Naniboujou never really got off the ground as a private club. This building was supposed to be bigger, there were supposed to be tennis courts on that lawn between here and the lake, all sorts of things never happened. Most of the land was sold—some of it became the state park across the road—and the lodge kept changing hands. It was even a nightclub for a while, and a Christian retreat. Now the Ramseys run it as a public lodge. But they refuse to apply for a liquor license.”

  “They don’t need a liquor license if this is the usual kind of food they serve,” observed Betsy, lifting her fork.

  The salad had been mixed greens with purple onion slices, strawberries, some kind of soft cheese—brie, Betsy thought—with a dressing made of raspberry vinegar and poppy seed. It was followed by a spinach lasagna so light it was apparently made with eggs as well as cheese. With the lasagna came carrots glazed with brown sugar, orange juice, and ginger. The bread was fresh-baked sourdough. Jill, sighing happily, said the food was always wonderful. Dessert was lemon-flavored ice cream with tiny, chocolate-coated chocolate cookies.

  Over coffee, Jill said, “Tell me some more about the woman you dreamed you saw.”

  “Why? I’m starting to agree with you, it was probably a dream,” she said. “I was so tired, I’m still tired, I’ve been tired for weeks.” But Jill only waited, so Betsy said, “Okay, the woman was like an angel, kind of. Inhumanly thin, like something that lives on ma
nna or ambrosia, not spinach lasagna and ice cream. A golden angel—except she didn’t have a message for me. Don’t angels generally come with messages?”

  Jill didn’t reply, but kept her face still, waiting.

  So Betsy continued. “After she left, I went back to sleep. Or the dream ended. And I had another dream, where the thin woman wanted to do something wicked, I don’t remember what, but she kept whispering about it. And she wanted me to smoke a cigarette with her. Then I woke up again and smelled delicious food and it was getting dark, and you hadn’t come down, so I decided to come up and get you. I went through the lobby—Why do they have two staircases going up to the second floor?”

  “Because it’s easier to get luggage up to the second floor the back way,” said Jill. “They don’t want guests dragging luggage through the dining room.”

  “No, not the back door, I mean two staircases up to the front of the hallway, one off the lobby and the other off the dining room.” She frowned. “How come I only saw one staircase when I came down?”

  Jill said, “The staircase off the lobby goes to the wing that faces the lake. The staircase off the dining room goes to our wing.”

  “There are two wings?”

  “Sure, didn’t you know that? We’ve got the wing that overlooks the west lawn, it’s got the knotty pine paneling. The other wing has painted walls.”

  Betsy half closed her eyes, remembering something. “Uh-oh,” she said. “The stairs off the lobby go to the wing without the paneling, right? The stairs off the dining room go to the wing with knotty pine—our wing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s the room at the top of the lobby stairs where the body is, because I went up those stairs.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure I went up the lobby stairs. And if there’s a door up there set at an angle, and there’s a fireplace in that room, too, then yes.”

  Jill put her cup down. “Wait here,” she said. She went out to the lobby, where James was checking in a late-arriving couple.