Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_02

by Framed in Lace

  The cleaning partners were locals who lived just up the road. They’d worked here two years, but only while school was in. They were dressed in those aprons that cover all your clothing, even in back. These were a matching set in mint green. Patterned scarves were tied around their heads, à la Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz. They had their heavy rubber gloves in their laps and they were smoking up a storm, their way of handling the fright, sickness, and excitement of this event.

  They said they had knocked on the door of room seven about two, checkout time—it was now quarter after three—and when there was no reply, Lise had unlocked the door and they had seen the body and run pell-mell for the office to tell Mary to dial 911. No, they hadn’t gone in, no they hadn’t turned on any lights or checked to see if the man was really dead—of course he was dead, it only took one look to tell he was dead. Their little wheeled cart was still right outside the door—it wasn’t? Well, they hadn’t moved it, they had come right here as fast as they could and had been here ever since and did Malloy know when they might be able to finish their work and go home?

  Malloy questioned them closely, but their answers were decidedly innocent. He asked if they could stay here for awhile, until the room on the end had been searched. Then they could clean it.

  He turned to the owner, Mary Olsen. She said the man had checked in alone late yesterday afternoon and seemed all right, except all tired out from driving. She produced the sign-in card the man had filled out.

  Malloy took it, a little five-by-six piece of thin white cardboard, and sat a few moments staring at it, because the name on it had a certain familiarity: Carl Winters. And from what Malloy remembered of the death scene, this Carl was about the right age to be the other Carl, the Carl that was Martha Winters’s husband. The address on the card was Omaha, Nebraska. Hadn’t run far, then. Hadn’t done well, either, by the shabby suit and the tired old Chevy with Nebraska plates that was parked outside his unit. Trudie, it seemed, wasn’t as valuable a partner as Martha had been.

  “He check in alone?”

  “Yes, and I watched his car pull up to his unit and he was the only one who got out.”

  “Did he make any phone calls?” asked Malloy.

  She checked. “Just one, a local call.”

  Since he hadn’t gone through a switchboard, she had no record of the number the victim had called. Malloy noted the time of the call in his notebook.

  He got the names and addresses of the other two guests, then went back and stood again in the doorway and watched his partner. The medical examiner was with the body, taking measurements.

  “Whaddaya think,” said Malloy, “he comes home to commit suicide?”

  “So you know who he is?”

  “Unless he signed in under a false name, our victim was one Carl Winters, who was alleged to have run off with a waitress back in 1948, leaving his wife Martha to run the dry cleaning store and raise their son all by herself. So now he’s old and sick and sorry, so he comes home, calls his wife, who tells him to get stuffed, so he suicides.”

  “One problem with that theory,” said Malloy’s partner.

  “What’s that?”

  “This wasn’t a suicide.”

  On his way back to the station, Malloy put in a call for Jill Cross to meet him there. She was standing beside her squad car when he pulled into the parking lot and approached at his gesture, breath gently steaming, to bend with the awkwardness imposed by a Kevlar vest and heavy winter police jacket to look in his window.

  “You heard about the gunshot victim at Hillcrest?” he asked.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Identification on the body and the registration card both say it’s Carl Winters.”

  “Oh, lord,” said Jill.

  “He made one local call after he arrived yesterday. The motel can’t say to who, but it isn’t hard to guess.”

  “So you want me to come along when you tell her?”

  Malloy nodded. “It may be an arrest situation. It’s not a suicide we’re dealing with here, unless he had the rare gift of being able to shoot himself from across the room.”

  Jill stared at Malloy, who stared calmly back. She said after a bit, “We’re going to arrest Martha Winters?”

  “No, we’re going to go talk to her. Carl Winters isn’t exactly the rarest name in the world, so we’re not even positive it’s her husband. I’m going to go talk to her about what happened, see which way she jumps. She’s not a professional criminal; if she did it, she may be waiting to tell us all about how she murdered Trudie Koch all those years ago and hid her body in that boat, and now has rounded things off by shooting her husband.”

  Jill was even more surprised. “I thought the skeleton couldn’t be Trudie.”

  “Here, get in, I’m letting all the heat out through this window.”

  Jill came around and got in the car which, though without markings, proclaimed itself a public safety vehicle on the inside with a two-way radio and a red light with a magnet that could be stuck on the roof or dash.

  Jill by now had another question. “If it is Martha Winters’s husband, what brought him back to town?”

  “The story of the skeleton they found on the Hopkins. It’s been turning up in papers all across the country; I’ve got inquiries from as far away as Fort Meyers, Florida.”

  “But I thought there wasn’t a connection between the body hidden on the Hopkins and the disappearance of Carl and Trudie Koch. I thought they happened a year apart.”

  “Everyone thought so—except Irene Potter, whose lunatic speculations to a local columnist inspired a story about small-town gossip that apparently got picked up and reprinted. Our victim had a clipping in his wallet from the Omaha World-Herald. Irene would blow a gasket if she could see how she’s described in that story—though the columnist was careful not to give her name. But you know how it is, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Here, buckle up; I’ll tell you the rest on our way to Winters Dry Cleaning.”

  They pulled out of the parking lot, and Malloy began to unwind his theory. “Around twelve-thirty today I got a call from Diane Bolles, who owns Nightingales, over in the Old Mill. She says she was talking to Betsy Devonshire and somehow the subject of the Fourth of July 1949 came up—and Ms. Bolles is as sure as she can be that it rained all day the Fourth of July 1949. I have a witness who told me that the day she heard about them sinking the Hopkins was the Fourth of July, and it was a blazing hot day. I called the Minneapolis public library, which keeps weather records, and guess what?”

  “What?” said Jill.

  “The Fourth of July 1949 was rainy. But the Fourth of July in 1948, the year Carl Winters and Trudie Koch went missing, was stinking hot. Every book about the streetcar steamboats and the raising of the Minnehaha I’ve looked at says 1949. But I wonder if maybe they’re wrong, every damn one of them.”

  Jill said, “How did that happen, that they’re all wrong?”

  Malloy gestured sharply. “I wondered the same thing, but the chief says he read just the other day about that sort of thing, which happens all the time, he says. Someone researching the history of a town asks a local what year something happened, and the local says, ‘1949, I think,’ and the author writes that down as fact, and for years after that, other history writers use his book as the source instead of asking around. The chief was about to send me out to find more people who were here in 1948 when the call came in about the body at the motel. But the upshot is, where before it wasn’t possible, now it is entirely possible that the skeleton on the Hopkins is Trudie Koch.”

  Jill sat back in silence. She thought about Martha Winters, who seemed to be such a nice, quiet, competent lady. Her grandson was nice too, a good-looking young man who seemed content to take over the dry cleaning business his grandfather had founded. Jeff’s father was an executive with 3M, and reportedly disappointed in the boy’s lack of ambition.

  Jeff had been only a year behind Jill in high school; she’d actually danced with him once
or twice. And she’d sat on more than one occasion at the table in Crewel World with Martha and the rest of the Monday Bunch. It gave her an odd feeling to think she might be about to help arrest a Monday Bunch member for murder. She’d ask Malloy to get someone else, except she was the only female cop on the little force, and they needed a female cop to do this because Martha was a female.

  Jill had never arrested anyone for murder. The worst arrest she’d ever made was the time she’d brought in a teen high on drugs who had thrown a plastic garbage can full of trash at her. And that had been hard because she knew the kid’s parents really well.

  Of course, in a small town, any arrests you made were likely to be of people you knew or at least knew about.

  But Martha Winters? A murderer? That seemed impossible. Surely there was some other explanation.

  “Do we have to go talk to her right now? Maybe there’s some other explanation.”

  “Maybe there is,” greed Malloy, “but we have to talk to Mrs. Winters anyway. Tell her that her husband is a murder victim. But I kind of think she might be able to help us figure out why.”

  7

  It wasn’t far to the dry cleaners, a small, flat-roofed building whose entire customer area was plate glass. They walked into a reek of cleaning fluid and Malloy said to the young man behind the counter, “Hi, Jeff. Is your grandmother here?”

  “She’s home this afternoon,” the young man replied. There was no hint of reserve or nervousness in his voice. He seemed only as surprised and curious as anyone would be when the police come asking for a grandparent.

  So they went without undue haste to the modest house, a two-story brick with a small front yard shaded by a towering blue spruce.

  Jill saw Malloy heave a deep breath and felt for him. And herself. Martha Winters had never earned so much as a parking ticket and was a good, churchgoing Lutheran. If they made a slip here, the town would have their badges. Yet the questions had to be asked.

  They went up the brick steps to the front door, and Malloy rang the bell. It was opened by Martha in a gray housedress and slippers. With her round, pleasant face and white hair, she looked like Norman Rockwell’s model of a grandmother. But when she saw Jill’s uniform her hand went to her mouth. “What’s happened?” she asked. “Is it Jeff?”

  “No, ma‘am,” said Malloy. “We just left him at the store; he’s fine. May we come in?”

  “All right.” Martha stepped back.

  The tiny area immediately inside the door was tiled, and there was a coat closet on the left. The immaculate living room was to their right, carpeted in a powder blue plush that was pleasant to the feet. Most of the wall facing the street was a box-pleated drape in a matching color, open in the center to show a big square window. The couch was ribbon-striped, green, beige, and blue. The recliner was vinyl in a green that didn’t quite match—that’s Jeff’s, I bet, thought Jill—and there was a velvet easy chair in beige. Martha sat in the easy chair and motioned them to the couch. On the wall over the couch, pressed behind glass frames, were three ecru handkerchiefs with elaborate lace edging.

  “Thanks, I’ll stand,” said Malloy, and Jill braked and turned to stand to the left and a little behind him. But her eye wandered again to the handkerchiefs; were those edgings bobbin lace?

  “Mrs. Winters, do you know where your husband is?” asked Malloy.

  Martha started to pretend to be surprised at the question, but discarded the attempt immediately. “He’s at the Hillcrest Motel out on Seven,” she said in a low voice.

  “Did he call you from there yesterday?”

  She nodded. “But I don’t want to see him. I told him that and told him not to call me again.” Her lip trembled. “Is that why you’re here? To talk to me about him? I don’t want to, you know. Except to ask if I’ll have to divorce him, now I know he’s alive. Or will I?” Her faded blue eyes moved from Malloy to Jill and back again. “I mean, he’s legally dead, isn’t he?”

  “Ma‘am, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but we think he’s really dead. A body was found in his room this afternoon, and the driver’s license we found on the body has his name on it.”

  Martha sat back, and her lips began to move in a very odd way. A smile came and went, came and broadened, and suddenly she began to laugh. Jill and Malloy looked at one another in wonder.

  The laughter quickly became hysterical, and Jill went in search of a bathroom. She found one and wet a washcloth in cold water, which she brought back along with a small glass of water. She applied the cloth to Martha’s face, speaking soothingly to her.

  “Here now, here now, it’s all right, it’s all right. You’re going to be fine. I want you to drink this.”

  The laughter caught on a sob and stumbled to a halt. Martha took the glass from Jill and took a sip, then another. “Thank you, Jill,” she said at last. “I’m all right now.” But her hand trembled, and her face was white.

  “You sure?”

  Martha nodded. She took the washcloth and wiped her eyes and mouth, then folded it carefully into her hand.

  Malloy said, “What can you tell us about your husband’s return?”

  Martha closed her eyes. “Nothing. I was surprised, of course. I really thought he was dead.” Her eyes opened. “I don’t know why he came back or what he wanted. He’s an old man, let’s see, he must be seventy-seven-no, seventy-eight. I don’t know what he thought I would say, calling me like that right out of the blue, saying he wanted to see me, would I come over. To a motel? I ask you! And I told him not to come here, either. The idea! He tried to coax me, argue with me, and I said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you, now or ever!’ and I hung up on him.” Her face changed from an echo of the indignation she must have felt to concern. “What, was he sick? I thought about it after I went to bed last night, maybe I should have listened to him, maybe he’s sick and she left him and he’s all alone …”

  “Who left him?” asked Malloy.

  “Why that waitress, what was her name, Gertrude something. Trudie, she was called. The young woman he went off with—I suppose that’s true, now, isn’t it? She probably left him a month after they ran off together. So what was it he died of? Heart? Cancer?”

  “No, ma‘am, he was shot.”

  Her eyes and mouth became three round Os. “Shot? I don’t understand. You said he was dead.”

  “He is,” said Malloy patiently. “He was shot to death in his room and someone tried to make it look like suicide.”

  “Oh. Oh! Yes, I should have thought of suicide—but you say it wasn’t suicide.”

  “No, ma‘am.”

  “But then, who shot him? Was it her—Trudie? Surely he wouldn’t have brought her along and then called me.” Her expression was verging on the indignant again.

  “We don’t know who shot him. That’s what we’re trying to determine. But before we go any further, I think we have to be sure the deceased was Carl Winters. How sure are you that the man you talked to on the phone was your husband?”

  “Oh, it was Carl, all right. His voice was pretty much the same, and he talked like he always talked, kind of bossy and sure of himself. He said he had something important to tell me, he wouldn’t say what it was, except it was something I needed to know. He talked just like he used to, telling me to just hush and listen to him. As if what he did to me didn’t matter, as if after all these years I hadn’t gotten over letting him talk to me like that!”

  “Yes, ma‘am,” said Malloy. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an old wallet. “Do you recognize this?”

  “No.”

  He opened it, found the section that holds photographs or credit cards, turned it around and held it out. “Do you recognize this?”

  Jill leaned forward just a bit and saw it was an old photograph of a woman in a ruffled apron standing in front of a freshly planted evergreen tree.

  Martha turned her face away. “That’s me,” she said. “He used to carry that photograph. He took it the day after I told hi
m I was pregnant. He bought that tree, it’s the one out in the front yard. He said he wanted it to remind him of the days before I lost my figure.” Her mouth quivered. “I didn’t lose my figure until Carl ran out on me.” She looked toward the wallet. “Funny he kept it, isn’t it?” Her eyes were hurt and puzzled.

  “Do you know if Carl called anyone else but you?”

  “I have no idea. I shouldn’t think so, but Carl did have the capacity to surprise me.” She blinked twice then said, “What are you going to do with him—his body?”

  “There will be an autopsy, and then the medical examiner will give you a call and you can tell him what you want done with the body.”

  A very odd expression crossed Martha’s face, but all she said was, “Very well.”

  “Have you any idea who would want him dead after all these years?”

  She thought briefly. “No. Not even me.”

  “Well,” said Malloy, “thank you very much for your cooperation. I’m going to leave you one of my cards,” he added, handing it to her. “If you think of anything, please contact me. And if I have any more questions, may I talk to you again?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll be at the store tomorrow morning.”

  Malloy was obviously finished, so Jill asked, “Martha, those handkerchiefs over the sofa. Did you do the lace on them?”

  Martha nodded. “I won a blue ribbon at the State Fair with the one in the middle. I gave it up after Carl left. I was too busy with the store and raising Henry. Probably my eyes are too bad now to take it up again.”

  Jill went to the couch and leaned toward the middle one. “I can’t imagine eyes good enough for this kind of thing to start with. I mean, look at the thread—such delicate work—oh, and look, the corner has a butterfly.”

  “I always put that butterfly in the lace I was keeping for my own use. It was kind of a signature.”

  “This is bobbin lace, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “The subject came up at the last Monday Bunch meeting. Did you know Alice does bobbin lace?”