Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_04

by Unraveled Sleeve

  Carla sniffed and walked out.

  13

  Douglas went to the chair she’d vacated and gestured for Betsy to sit on the straight-backed chair near the door. She obeyed.

  Liddy said, “We heard you’re some kind of private eye.”

  “Oh, no. My friend Jill Cross is a police officer—a patrol officer, not an investigator. I don’t have any official status at all. Except in my needlework shop, and even there one of my employees is the person to ask for real help.” Betsy crossed her legs and leaned back with what she hoped was casual grace. “Do you do needlework, Liddy?” she asked.

  Liddy eyed her suspiciously, but the question was innocuous, and Betsy kept her expression light. The young woman had changed into jeans and a cotton sweater, and she looked very young. She rolled over and up to sit cross-legged on the bed, hands on her knees. There were dark shadows under her red-rimmed eyes. “Yes, Mama taught me to crochet and do needlepoint when I was nine or ten, and then I counted cross-stitch when she started doing that several years later. After the divorce, actually. It was in San Francisco; we spent a whole summer out there, remember, Doogie? I love San Francisco, it’s so beautiful and sophisticated. And we both liked Jack a whole lot. I hadn’t been there before, and so I thought anyplace in California was warm and sunny and I packed swimsuits and shorts, but San Francisco is chilly and I hardly got to wear them at all. Instead, we shopped for new clothes for me and rode cable cars and explored Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf, and when we went home at the end of a day, Mama taught me to do counted. I guess I was her first student.”

  “I’ve heard from several people that she was very patient with her students. Was she as patient with you?”

  Liddy relaxed further, pleased to talk about her mother. “Oh yes. Very. Well, at first. It was all so wonderful in San Francisco until she and Jack started to fight. Things got very tense the last couple of weeks.” Liddy frowned. “I wish she could have stayed with Jack. She would have been happy, and then so would we. But Mama was very fickle.”

  Douglas cleared his throat. She gave him a “What-did-I-say?” look and deliberately continued to Betsy, “I loved my mother.” She had to stop and swallow before she could continue, in a higher, more wavery voice. “But my mother could be very difficult. I used to think she was indifferent to our needs. Now I think it was because of the allergies. She had to concentrate on not getting sick, on staying away from things that made her sick, and that took all her attention. Even so, there were times when she came home and was wonderful to us. But she always went away again.” She folded her lips inward, and fell silent.

  Betsy said, “Did the allergies start before she divorced your father?”

  “Oh, yes.” Liddy nodded. “We were eight and nine when it started. That’s the same age Tony’s children are now.”

  “Tony was her current boyfriend.”

  Douglas said, “But our parents were younger than Tony when we were that age. So it wasn’t the same.”

  “No,” said Liddy, “and it’s not the same. They won’t—” She put her hand over her mouth, and tears flowed over the fingers. In a moment they stopped and she said in a much firmer voice, “Nobody could possibly think my father murdered my mother!”

  “Of course not, Liddy,” said Douglas. “Once they talk to Dad, they’ll see he couldn’t possibly have anything to do with any of this and turn him loose.” He looked at Betsy. “You don’t think he’s a murderer, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” replied Betsy, almost truthfully. “What’s more, the sheriff didn’t say a word to indicate he thought Sharon was murdered.” Unless Jill was talking to him this minute. Which was extremely likely. “In fact, the sheriff told me your mother suffered a severe allergic attack before she died. Perhaps she was seeking a private place to use her EpiPen and went to your father’s room. I saw her there, dead. She did have an EpiPen with her, of course.”

  “Liddy, don’t talk to her about this!” ordered Douglas.

  “Yes,” said Liddy, ignoring him. “She had several, and never went anywhere without them. It saved her life once that I know of.”

  “So let’s say she was having an attack. She would need to use the pen and then lie down, wouldn’t she?”

  “No, what she would need is to go to a hospital,” said Douglas, not quite so belligerently.

  “She would need to be driven to an emergency room,” agreed Liddy. “The EpiPen only keeps her alive long enough to get to one, it doesn’t stop the anaphylaxis.”

  Betsy nodded. “And if she had an attack here, then possibly there was no one in the lobby to ask for help to get to a hospital. The front desk isn’t always manned, I’ve noticed. But she knew your father was here, she said to me that she came here to talk to him, to be reconciled with him. So let’s suppose she went upstairs and knocked, and when there was no answer, she tried his door. It opened and she went in. She must have been very sick—climbing stairs has to be hard on someone having trouble breathing. So she used the pen and lay down to wait for it to go to work. But if you’re right, the pen wasn’t enough, she needed more drastic aid.”

  “Why didn’t she use the phone?” asked Liddy.

  “Because there aren’t any phones in the rooms, didn’t you know that?”

  She looked around. “No, I didn’t notice that. How odd. Weren’t there phones when we came here years ago, Doogie?”

  “I think so. I don’t remember,” he said.

  Betsy took the reins of the narrative back. “There is a pay phone in the lobby, but it’s off in a dim corner. Maybe she didn’t notice it when she went into the lobby from the lounge. So she went up to your father’s room, but he wasn’t there. She didn’t have the strength to go back downstairs. So she lay down on the bed and died. When I saw her, her lips were blue, and I thought she might have been smothered, you know, as if with a pillow.”

  Douglas made a sound of shock or distress but when Betsy looked at him, he looked away with a gesture for her to continue.

  “When I found her, I was scared and ran to tell someone. If in the meantime your father came back and found her dead, he may have panicked. He had told people he would never take her back, and if he said it angrily, they might think he had something to do with her death. So he decided to get rid of the body. Do you know if they had quarreled recently?”

  Douglas said, “I don’t know. But what you said… that sounds plausible. They were always quarreling—”

  “But not recently!” cried Liddy. “You know Dad hasn’t talked to Mama in weeks, he hasn’t seen her in months, so why would he panic? He hasn’t got anything to do with this. Plus, he simply wouldn’t hide a dead body, especially Mama’s!”

  “You don’t—” began Douglas, turning on her. She stared him down. “Well, all right, you’re right. He wouldn’t. But then who?”

  Liddy said, frowning, “I don’t know. But now that they know it was an allergic reaction, the sheriff will know it was a natural occurrence, Dad didn’t kill Mama—no one killed Mama.”

  Doogie said, “You’re right, I agree, not murder, never murder. Maybe the autopsy report will show what she was having a reaction to.” He asked Betsy, “Is that possible?”

  Betsy said, “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Douglas asked, “If they don’t release Dad, who is responsible for taking care of my mother’s body? I don’t like the idea of her being stuck in a refrigerator somewhere until… well, until this is straightened out.”

  “They’ve done the autopsy, that’s how they found out she didn’t drown,” said Liddy. “So they have to give her back, don’t they?”

  Betsy said, “I don’t know. I think you need legal advice. It’s a crime to hide a body, you know.”

  Douglas said, “I called Dad’s attorney and he said he doesn’t handle criminal cases—”

  “Doogie!” cried Liddy. “I thought we agreed, Dad didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “We know that, but who knows what the sheriff
will charge him with? We have to face facts, Liddy. Dad’s in trouble with the law, and we have to act quickly. I asked Dad’s attorney to recommend someone, and he did, and the new attorney said he’d go straight to Grand Marais. That was last night, so he’s probably there with Dad now. I had to wire him a retainer before he would even phone Dad.”

  Douglas stood and came to a kind of attention, like the soldier Frank called on Liddy to be. Liddy, on the other hand, was drooping with woe.

  “Do you have the money to make bail for your father?” asked Betsy.

  Douglas nodded. “Yes. Unless it’s hundreds of thousands, of course. That would take a few days to round up.”

  Liddy perked up at Betsy’s look of surprise and said with a sly smile, “What, nobody told you my mother was rich?”

  “Actually, yes. But it takes time for a will to be admitted to probate—even more time, if there isn’t a will. Months.” Betsy was speaking from experience.

  “No, you still don’t understand,” said Liddy. “Our mother set up trust funds for each of us when we were born. That’s all we get, that’s our inheritance. But Mama’s no piker; the income from those trusts has kept us in socks and school and sports cars all our lives. What, you thought Doogie works for the Forest Service because he needs the money? No, we work because—Why do we work, Doogie?” Her tone had turned dry and mocking, another abrupt mood change.

  “What’s the matter with you, Liddy?” he asked, half angry, half concerned. He said to Betsy, “Mother’s estate goes to a private laboratory researching allergies. She told us that years ago.”

  Liddy continued as if he had not spoken. “We work because we want to make a difference, because we want fulfillment, because that’s what’s expected of healthy young people, because there’s satisfaction in having money you earned yourself, because it’s hard to fill the lonely hours with idle amusement. But as a happy homemaker, I fill the lonely hours just fine.” She looked at Betsy with a strange little smile. “Are the dead lonely?” she asked.

  “I think it depends on where your spirit goes after death,” said Betsy.

  “ ‘Heaven for the climate, hell for the company’!” quoted Liddy, the smile turning real. “Oh, my God!” she said and began to cry, with loud sobs this time.

  Douglas gave Betsy a cold look and went to sit beside his sister on the bed, his hand on her bent back. “I think you should leave now,” he said. “I hope you got what you wanted, and I hope you’re satisfied. We’ll see you at lunch for an answer to our question about our father.”

  Betsy left the room, and found Carla waiting out in the hall. “How dare you make that child suffer even more than she’s already suffering?” she said with a hiss as she reached past Betsy for the doorknob.

  “Wait!” Betsy said. “Please? May I talk with you for just a few minutes? It won’t hurt, surely, for Liddy to have a bit of private time with her brother.”

  Carla stepped back to look with cold suspicion at Betsy. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  “About Sharon Kaye.”

  “I can’t tell you more than I already have.”

  “I think you can. And you can tell me more about Frank as well as Douglas and Elizabeth. Maybe between us we can find the truth.”

  “Oh?” Carla still glared, but Betsy, remembering how Jill could calm a person with a calm look, accepted her glare, and Carla looked away first. “Oh, what does it matter? All right.” The anger vanished into mere annoyance, Carla went past Betsy to the head of the stairs. “Come on, I promised I’d let Liddy know as soon as lunch was served.”

  “Fine,” said Betsy, following her down.

  They went into the dining room and sat on the round couch with the pillar. The faded red fabric was scratchy, and the circle was small enough that it was impossible for them to look one another in the face without leaning forward, or hanging halfway off the seat.

  Wait people were bringing dishes, flatware and glasses to the counter, further breaking any sense of intimacy.

  Carla said, “Sadie told me you investigate crime, so you must know about things like what is going to happen to Frank?” Her interest was obvious, even desperate, though she was not looking at Betsy.

  “I don’t know what the penalty is for concealing a death, but it can’t be as serious as even the least serious charge of homicide. The question is, why did Frank try to hide Sharon’s body?”

  “He didn’t!” objected Carla sharply. “He doesn’t know anything about Sharon dying in his room! He didn’t know she’d even been there until you and Jill came knocking on his door.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Why… he told me,” said Carla, and closed her eyes against Betsy’s next question.

  Betsy asked, “Did he come to Naniboujou to see you?”

  Carla grimaced and opened her eyes. “Cut right to the chase, don’t you?” Betsy held her tongue, and Carla said, “He came because he loves this place, and to do a little cross-country skiing—and yes, to see me.”

  “Did Sharon come here to try to break up the relationship between you and Frank?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps. Yes, I think so.” Carla paused a few moments, thinking before she spoke. “Sharon couldn’t get along with Frank, but every time he started to look elsewhere for female companionship, she came back to him, saying she wanted to reconcile. I’d watched her do it once before, but I didn’t recognize it for the game it was. Then she found out Frank and I were getting close and she started in again with talk of reconciliation. She was using exactly the same language as before, and I suddenly realized this was a pattern of behavior. I couldn’t think what to do, but at last I spoke candidly to Frank about it—and to my utter surprise, it was like someone turned on a light in Frank’s head. Poor man, he kind of stared at me and said, ‘Do you know, I think you’re right,’ like he was surprised at my perspicacity.” Carla gave a halfhearted chuckle, then leaned forward to confide, “You and I come from a generation that said the woman must never reveal her tricks to the man, nor speak of another woman’s tricks. Just like we must never let on we’re smarter or stronger than he is.”

  Betsy nodded. She had started adolescence at a time when women still held such notions, though some had started questioning them—and a few had even laughed at them. But some still took them seriously even now, in the twenty-first century. She said, “Were you really angry with her?”

  Carla nodded. “At first, when I realized what she was up to. But I won, you see. Frank wasn’t going to take her back. We talked about it, and he was quite firm on that.” Chin up, she smiled in remembered triumph.

  But Betsy thought of the confident way Sharon had spoken of a reconciliation. Carla might have won, but Sharon hadn’t known it.

  “How well did you know Sharon? Were you friends?”

  Carla frowned at her. “No, of course not.”

  “Yet you seem to know her pretty well. Did you see much of her at needlework functions?”

  “A fair amount. I never talked to her about Frank, of course. Or the children, except to ask her how they were. And she always said they were doing very well, as if she knew, or even cared. Her treatment of them was totally self-serving. Yanking them this way then that, saying she was coming home for good, then smashing their joy with an indifference that was shocking in its cold-bloodedness.”

  “Did you talk to Liddy and Douglas about this?”

  Carla hesitated, then said, “Yes, I did, once they knew about Frank and me.”

  “Knew what?”

  “What happened was, Frank and I were having dinner at his house and they walked in on us. That was last summer. We’d thought they were gone for the weekend, sailing on Lake Michigan, but they came back Saturday night because the weather had turned bad. It was embarrassing, but—” Carla smiled again, this time in a way that let Betsy understand it might have been even more embarrassing if the two had come in an hour later than they did.

  “What did they say when you talked to
them about Sharon?”

  “That was a few weeks later, after they got over the shock of learning their father had a girlfriend.” Carla laughed. “At first, they defended her to the uttermost, poor things. But I could tell they were hurting, her behavior was—what’s the word? Whipsawing, that’s it, whipsawing them.”

  Like I am doing to Jill, thought Betsy. “Are they close, the brother and sister?”

  “Yes, very. Their mother’s… ‘inconstant love’ is the term Frank used, and isn’t that the most poignant thing you’ve heard in a while? Anyway, she’d been behaving like that for years, so Liddy had taken over parenting Doogie. Frank allowed that, which I think might have been a mistake. I think that’s why she’s still living at home, so Doogie can feel they’ll both be there for him, his father and his sister. Of course Doogie’s twenty-one, so it’s past time Liddy started thinking of her own future. I’m doing what I can for him, and I consult with Liddy about what Doogie likes and needs, which makes both of them happy. I think I’ll be as good for them as I am for Frank. At the very least, I can relieve Liddy of responsibility for Doogie.”

  “What do they think of the relationship between you and their father?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they approve. Naturally they want their father to be happy.”

  But Betsy knew that children who “defend their mother to the uttermost” were not normally pleased to find another woman in her place. There could be all sorts of cruel angles here. Carla might be angrier than she had said she was about Sharon trying to come back to Frank, and not so sure as she had appeared to be that she had won the battle for Frank’s heart. Douglas and Liddy might like Carla much better than their own inconstant mother—so much that they saw their mother as a threat to the stability Carla could bring. Or as a threat to their father’s happiness. Or perhaps only Douglas hated his mother—how Freudian! Or, had their father at last come to hate her and, his eyes opened to her perfidy, try to hide her body because he had murdered her?