Framed in Lace

by Monica Ferris

  “Yes, but you can trace those guns, and he told you this was not traceable, right?”

  “Yes.”

  A little silence fell, then Jill said, “Have you got anything new?”

  “I was looking for someone to give the tree to, and I talked to this woman in Westwood South Nursing Home. Her name is Dorothy, and—”

  “Dorothy Brown? She was my grandmother’s best friend!” said Jill. “Is she still alive? How is she?”

  “She’s bedridden, and her mind is not as clear as it used to be.”

  Jill chuckled. “I don’t remember her mind ever being as clear as it used to be. Of course, she was an old woman when I was a little girl.” She sobered. “I should go see her someday. It’s awful that I thought she was dead.”

  “She might not know you,” said Betsy. “You know how old people get confused about modern events but remember old ones clearly? Well, Dorothy is losing old stuff, too. She said that her son never went to Omaha and was both shot and drowned by a Dutchman.”

  “She always says that, and she’s absolutely right. Her son died in the ocean while trying to land on Omaha Beach in Normandy, shot and drowned, just the way she tells it.”

  “‘Dutchman’!” exclaimed Betsy. “That’s an old word for a German. She said she is a hundred and two. Could that be right, too?”

  “She was a hundred two years ago. I went to her birthday party. She knew who she was and what was going on then. They asked me as part of the entertainment to give her that little test, you know, when someone has a head injury? Do you know where you are? What year is this? Who is the President of the United States?”

  Betsy said, “She told me she always guesses Dwight Eisenhower because he was her favorite.”

  Jill laughed. “Yes, that’s what she said at the party, too. It’s her favorite joke. She’s not as ga-ga as people think. I really should go over there and see her.”

  It was Saturday. Melinda’s Christmas tree ornament was as big a success as Betsy hoped it would be. She was taking the names of women who wanted to own the pattern when it was published. She would have to make sure she had enough forty-eight-count silk gauze in stock. Her own name was not on the list, of course; she was still struggling with the “easy” ornaments in the stitchery kit. Counted cross-stitch on forty-eight-count silk was not remotely within her skills at this point.

  Betsy worked for awhile on the duck. Even now that she could see the picture forming on the cloth, she would still occasionally make a mistake and have to undo some stitches. And she couldn’t always just unsew them, the floss would catch on something and she’d have to get out the scissors.

  Finally, she just put it away and got out her knitting. She was doing another scarf, this one changing colors from blue to a blue and white mix to white and back to blue every twelve inches. She was on the seventh foot—blue—and not sure if she was going to stop there or not. If she didn’t, she was going to have to do a blue/white mix, a white, and blue again so the ends would match, and a ten-foot scarf was an awful lot of scarf. Not for her to knit, for the wearer to manage. She loved knitting this; it was her favorite pattern of knit two, purl two fifty-two times with an odd stitch at either end. It made a thick, attractive pattern and she was doing it in pure wool. There were hardly any errors in it. Godwin had admired it; she hoped he had no idea it was to be his Christmas present.

  Godwin was in New York with his lover, taking in a Broadway show and ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Shelly was here, consulting with a customer over some ribbon embroidery.

  Betsy felt the familiar calming effect of the knitting start to take over. The customer bought her ribbon and left. Shelly came to kneel on the floor in front of Sophie and stroke her.

  “When does her cast come off?”

  “Monday. She’s going to miss it, I think. I knew someone in California who had a dog that broke its leg, and forever after, whenever you’d scold that dog, he would start to limp.”

  Shelly laughed. It was very quiet in the shop; Betsy had forgotten to turn on the radio. But the silence felt good, so she didn’t say anything. And Shelly didn’t either, which was pleasant.

  Betsy began to think about the case. “What if Odell didn’t see Carl?” she asked.

  She didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until Shelly said, “Have you found out something new?”

  “I don’t know. There’s just so many little things, it’s hard to think of a scenario that covers all of them. You think up something that might have happened, and it seems right, but then you realize there’s one little piece sticking out. Like, if Martha murdered Trudie and Carl knew it, why did he call her when he got back to town? Wasn’t he afraid she’d murder him, too?”

  “If he was, he wouldn’t have called her, so he wasn’t,” said Shelly.

  “But then why did he run away and not write to her or phone her? She thought he was dead.”

  “Maybe he did get in touch, and she was ashamed to tell anyone. Maybe he ran for some other reason than Trudie’s murder. Maybe Martha was a terrible wife, jealous and mean to him, and he’d finally had enough.”

  “But he came back because they found the skeleton, you know. He had a newspaper clipping about the discovery of the skeleton with him.”

  “Oh. But what was it you were saying about Odell not seeing Carl?”

  “Odell came by and told me he saw a man climbing out of the Hopkins the night before it was taken out and sunk. He was just a little boy, and when the man saw him, he got scared and ran home.”

  Shelly stood, all excited. “A man? Odell saw a man? Well, then, that’s it, right? Carl murdered Trudie. Odell saw him after he hid the body. Wow! That’s it!” She saw the way Betsy was looking at her and said, “Isn’t it?”

  “But then where did the handkerchief come from? Did Carl mean to frame his wife? Why?”

  “Because ... because he wanted to get rid of her. And in a divorce she would have gotten half his property.”

  “Not in 1948. And why hide the body? If you mean to frame someone, you don’t put the body where it is likely never to be found.”

  “All right, that’s right. What is it you’re thinking of?”

  “I’m not sure. This very old woman named Dorothy told me something important, but there’s this other piece that’s mixed in with the things I’ve already seen or heard. It keeps nagging me.”

  “What is it?” asked Shelly.

  “That’s the problem. I can’t remember.”

  15

  Saturday evening the shop closed at five; Christmas hours didn’t start until after Thanksgiving. Betsy changed to a pair of dark corduroy slacks and her old cotton sweater, had a quick supper, fed the cat, and left for Jessica Turnquist’s house. She had called Jessica, who agreed to talk to her.

  Jessica lived in the shortest row of townhouses Betsy had ever seen: three of them. They were white stucco with dark wood trim, located right down on the lakeshore off West Lake Street. A row of three garages lined one side of the driveway and there was a parking area beyond them. Jessica’s townhouse was the middle one; she had left her porch light on.

  A sharp breeze lifted Betsy’s collar and rustled the brown leaves on an old oak tree that hadn’t gotten the word that autumn was over. The air smelled of wood-smoke.

  The fire was in Jessica’s living room, in a small white-brick fireplace beside a pretty atrium door that was mere yards from the restless lake. The living room was not big but was interesting architecturally, with a canted ceiling and a loft, and the furniture was light and sophisticated.

  “I have a friend who’s a decorator,” said Jessica when Betsy remarked on the decor. “Left to myself, I’d do everything in overstuffed blue brocade. Would you like a cup of coffee? Or some tea?”

  “No, thank you, I just had supper.”

  “Is it too hot in here for you? Whenever I build a fire, it warms me up so much I sometimes have to open a window.”

  “No, I’m fine. The fire is nice.”
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br />   “Sit down then,” said Jessica, and when Betsy chose the couch, she took a beige leather chair. She touched her upper lip with a Kleenex and turned her slightly bulging eyes on Betsy. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “About several things. What made you decide to make friends with Martha after Carl disappeared?”

  “We already knew each other from church. Then Carl answered an ad I put in the paper and worked for me during State Fair for three or four years. I remember how a lot of people sort of drew the hems of their skirts away from her after—well, after Carl went away. She told several people she was sure he was dead, that a robber perhaps had thrown his body into a passing train. It seemed a strange thing to be sure of without any evidence, but it was then I realized she had loved him and missed him terribly, and she couldn’t believe he’d just abandoned her. She was sure that even if he’d left her willingly, he’d at least write to her at some point. She was so sad and distressed, and no one would reach out to her, and well, it just made me angry. So I did that little needlework heart for her, whipped it up in kind of a hurry, and gathered my courage and went and rang her doorbell. Oh, she cried and cried when she opened the package! She was so grateful, and she needed someone to talk to so badly, and so I just kept going back. And over the next few weeks we found we had lots in common. She came over to my place for Saturday night supper—I had an apartment back then—and had me over for Sunday dinner. Soon it wasn’t just pity anymore, we actually became good friends. And we’ve been friends ever since.”

  Betsy said, “It was good of you to reach out like that.”

  Jessica looked at the fire. “Thank you,” she murmured. “But she was as good for me as I was for her.”

  “It must have been difficult for you, being a widow back then. But at least your husband died a hero. Did he win any medals?” Betsy, looking around, said, “I don’t see his picture anywhere. Surely you were proud of him.”

  Her head lifted. “Of course I was proud of him! He was an officer, so handsome and so brave! We were very much in love, but we’d been married only a few months before he left for duty overseas. And then, when he didn’t come home, and I went on to other things, he became just that small part of my life, less than a year, and less and less significant to what I was doing. Finally, I put all his things into storage. I should do something with them; I don’t have anyone to leave them to, so I don’t know why I’ve kept them.”

  “I understand the custom is, one of his friends packs his belongings up and sends them home. Was there a diary or anything like that?”

  “No, just his uniforms and military records. And three medals, I remember them. But not that flag folded into a triangle, because that comes off the coffin, and Ed never had a coffin. But there was a long and kind letter full of little stories about Ed and his crew. I kept that, too.”

  “Really? Any museum or historical society would be very pleased to have something like that. Historians love letters and diaries at least as much as uniforms and medals.”

  “They do? Well, yes, I suppose they would. I never thought about giving Ed’s things to the historical society. What a good idea. Perhaps the other families would be interested in the letter. The men were such good friends, as soldiers get to be in combat, and the stories are all about them as well. And they were all lost when the plane went down, burned to nothing. No trace was ever found, no bodies sent home to bury.”

  “That’s why you felt sympathy for Martha, isn’t it? I mean, her not having a body to bury, either.”

  Jessica showed that genuine smile that made her pretty. “You do understand, don’t you? I remember dreaming that he came home and told me he’d missed the plane, he hadn’t gone on that last mission. That was my favorite dream for a long time.”

  “Was there a gun in the box?”

  “A gun?” Jessica looked alarmed, as if the conversation had turned an unexpected corner into unfriendly territory.

  Betsy smiled her warmest. “Yes, in the box your husband’s friend sent. It would have been a sidearm, a government-issue semiautomatic pistol.”

  Jessica’s mouth pressed into a thin, disapproving line. “Oh, no. There was a what-do-you-call-it, a holster, but they don’t allow guns to go by mail, it’s illegal.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, I should have thought of that.”

  “Oh, there’s something I have for you, so before I forget—” She got up and went to a glass-fronted cupboard whose bottom half was drawers. She opened a drawer and brought out a thin, clear-plastic bag. Inside it was a white crocheted angel made rigid with starch. “This is my donation for the tree.”

  “Thank you.” Betsy held the bag up and twirled it very gently. “You know, my mother used to make these. I don’t know what happened to the ones she gave me.”

  “Perhaps I can make one just for you.”

  “Perhaps you can show me how to make them—like showing someone how to fish versus giving him one?”

  Jessica chuckled, a rich, pleasant sound. “Yes, of course, that would be better, wouldn’t it? I’ve got a pattern somewhere. I’ll bring it to the next Monday Bunch meeting.”

  Betsy thanked her again and left. Oh, Jessica, you brave liar, she thought as she got into her car. But how can I prove it? And then she remembered something Jill had told her. If it was true, then there was actual physical evidence, something more than mere words, which could be twisted to mean anything.

  A few minutes later, she drove down the narrow lane that led to Martha’s house. The road looked white in her headlights, which made her think it was coated with ice, but her tires clung obediently when she braked, and she realized it was dried salt. Didn’t the Romans used to sow an enemy’s fields with salt to keep him from growing food? she thought. How can any vegetation survive alongside the streets and highways after a whole winter of this?

  But the blue spruce looked very healthy in her headlights, despite its proximity to the street. Betsy pulled into the driveway.

  She rang the bell and Martha answered promptly, though she was surprised to find Betsy on her doorstep. “I thought it would be Jess,” she said.

  “Oh, if your friend is coming over, I’ll leave and come back some other time,” said Betsy.

  “No, don’t do that; she called to say you were coming to visit her, and I assumed she’d call or come over so we could talk about it.” Martha smiled. “We do talk about you, you know. Come in, come in, we’re letting all the heat out standing here with the door open.”

  Betsy came in and shed her coat and boots on the little tiled area. “Do you two always tell each other what’s going on?”

  “Pretty much,” nodded Martha. “Anytime I get something new to talk about, I call her, and she lets me know what’s going on with her. Did she tell you what you wanted to know tonight?”

  “I think so,” said Betsy.

  “You sound hopeful. Are you actually making progress at last?” Martha’s face was itself desperately hopeful.

  “I think so,” Betsy repeated. “It’s been really hard, trying to figure something out just from what people say, or don’t say. That’s why I’m here. I think you can show me something that will speak for itself.”

  “I’ll show you anything I have. What is it?”

  “Would you be willing to take Jessica’s heart out of its frame and frog some of it while I watch?”

  “... Frog?”

  “Pull out some of the stitches.”

  “Why do you want me to do that?”

  When Betsy explained, Martha, her face inexpressibly sad, went and got the needlework Jessica had given her.

  Godwin came in Monday morning a few minutes late. He was positively agog with curiosity. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!” he demanded, slamming the door of the shop.

  “Tell you what?” said Betsy, lifting both eyebrows and widening her eyes at him.

  “That won’t do, you clever wench; I heard all about it at the Waterfront Café. You went to see Sergeant Malloy Saturday nig
ht and a little later he arrested Jessica Turnquist for murder. Is that not the proper sequence of events?”

  “Approximately.”

  “Wait a minute.” He hung up his beautiful camel wool coat and went to sit at the library table. “Now,” he said, “begin at the beginning, and don’t stop until you reach the end.”

  “Don’t you even want a cup of coffee?” asked someone else, and he looked toward the back of the shop, where Jill and Shelly were emerging with steaming cups.

  “If you’ve already told them, I’m going to die,” said Godwin.

  “No, we just got here,” said Shelly.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” asked Godwin.

  “Field trip sponsored by the parents, who are also supervising the children,” said Shelly. “I’m off only until noon,” she added, “so let’s get started. You will not believe how pleased I am to be here.” She put a cup in front of the chair at the head of the table and gestured at Betsy. “I understand you were positively brilliant,” she added. “So sit and tell us everything.”

  Jill had turned back to the coffee urn and now reappeared with a cup for herself and another for Godwin. “I‘d’ve stopped for cookies,” she said, “but I didn’t want to miss this, either.”

  Betsy sat down. “It was just a whole lot of little things that kept not adding up,” she began. “If Vern murdered Trudie, where did the handkerchief come from? If Martha murdered Carl, where did she get that old, unregistered pistol? And why did it still have World War II—era bullets in it? If Carl murdered Trudie and was coming home to confess, why would someone kill him? If someone wanted that handkerchief to frame Martha, why hide it and the body on the boat? If Alice Skoglund murdered Trudie to stop the blackmail, why would she also murder Carl? I just kept going in circles, trying to decide what was and what was not important.

  “One thing that didn’t seem important was that a very old woman said that Carl met his mistress at the State Fair and got all greasy. Another was that Jessica’s husband was an army air corps officer. But that one was very important; it was practically the key to this thing. He was the only person connected with this case who was an officer in the military, and that was important because it’s officers who get issued sidearms; enlisted men get rifles. When he was killed overseas, a friend packed up his belongings and shipped them to Jessica with a nice, long letter. Jessica said she got a holster but no gun. Army-issue guns are supposed to be turned in at the end of service, but that was a rule much observed in the breach. Jessica said she’d put everything into storage long ago, and that was important, because it meant it wasn’t in her house, where a visitor might come across it and steal it.