Embroidered Truths

by Monica Ferris

  Four

  BETSY was wakened early the next morning by the clock radio. Thanks to daylight savings time, it was now dark at 5:30 A.M. again. Bummer. Sophie, sleeping at the foot of the bed, raised her head when Betsy turned on the bedside lamp.

  “A-rew?” she inquired.

  “Water aerobics,” explained Betsy, as if the cat understood—perhaps she did. It was hard to tell just how intelligent Sophie was. It was in the cat’s interest to feign stupidity; it made for fewer demands.

  Betsy pulled on her swimsuit, crawled into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, and crept quietly down the stairs with her dressing bag over one shoulder. She didn’t know what time Godwin had come in, but he had or Sophie wouldn’t have slept at the foot of her bed.

  Three mornings a week Betsy went to the Courage Center in Golden Valley, with its Olympic-size pool filled with very warm water. Though the Courage Center was primarily for rehab and therapy, nonhandicapped people could use it, too. And this very early session meant she would be back home almost as early as her day normally began.

  Today, Friday, Renée was running the session. A tall, sturdy blonde with a drill sergeant’s voice, Renée put the class of about a dozen women, mostly seniors, through their movements. While some whined at the pace she set, all obediently jumping-jacked, grapevined, and cross-country-skied across the pool, and most thanked her at the end of the hour, proud of not being treated like fragile antiques.

  Betsy was climbing the stairs to her apartment soon after eight. She walked in to the scent of coffee. Godwin, resplendent in midnight blue slacks and royal blue shirt, was setting the table. “Good, you’re home,” he said. “The water’s boiling, we’ll have soft-boiled eggs in four minutes.”

  “Wow, thanks!”

  “A-rew!” demanded Sophie, determinedly underfoot, and Betsy went to the cabinet under the sink to open the large tin full of Sophie’s Science Diet dry food for obese cats. She had switched from Iams on the recommendation of her pet shop owner, but it was proving even less effective at making Sophie svelte.

  Betsy had instructed Godwin not to feed Sophie, as the animal had long ago learned that by lying about who had or had not fed her, she could get two or even three breakfasts or suppers.

  By the time Betsy had measured out a modest scoop of food, and washed and filled Sophie’s water dish, breakfast was ready.

  Over the last few bites of toast, Betsy asked, “Where were you last night?”

  “I went to the Dock, to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I told you I was going.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t come home after. I tried to wait up, but I finally got tired and went to bed. Did you meet some friends at the theater?”

  He smiled. “No, I went for a drive alone. I drove all over the place, up fifteen to Wayzata, then up one-oh-one to five and—I don’t know, just around. At first, I wanted to think how to get John to take me back, then later I wanted to think what it would be like to never go back to him even if he asked me to. I actually kind of came to like the idea. Then I came home.”

  At 9:15, Betsy was changing into her work clothes and Godwin was washing dishes when the phone rang. He picked up the receiver before she could. “Hello? Well, hello Tasha!” Hope was in his voice, Betsy could hear it clear over into her bedroom, where she was trying to decide whether to go for comfort or good looks in her footwear today. She was wearing a knit dress in a shade of deep pink, and the shoes would tell her what earrings to put on, the fancy blue crystals or the cute pink bunnies. She came to the door, comfortable pink shoe in one hand, handsome blue shoe on one foot. She stood there listening to Godwin talk. Who was Tasha?

  “No, I haven’t heard from him. He’s not at home? How strange. How did you know to call here?” A lengthy pause. “I see. No, she’s here, and I know she would have told me if John had called her.” Godwin stepped out of the kitchen to glance at Betsy, who nodded agreement vigorously. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. Yes, all right, if he does, I will, right away. And if he comes in, have him call me here or at Crewel World. ’Cause now I’m worried, too.’Kay? Thanks, Tasha. Bye.”

  He hung up and said to Betsy, “John didn’t come in to work today, and he’s got a couple of appointments. He’s not answering his phone at home. That was his secretary calling you, she thought maybe you knew where I was. She was surprised but happy when I answered. She asked me where John is.”

  “He didn’t call here last night,” said Betsy. “What do you think? Does he do things like this?”

  “Oh, gosh, no, especially not standing up a client. Besides, he’s up for partner in the firm, so he’s being very puck—no, punk—punk-something. What’s the word?”

  “Punctilious?”

  “Yes. He’s being that right now. So I don’t understand this at all.”

  “Do you have a phone number for John that the law firm doesn’t have?”

  “I have his cell phone number. But I should think they have that, too.”

  “Still. Call it and see if you get an answer.”

  Godwin turned back to the phone, thought a moment, then punched ten numbers. He waited, and waited, apparently listening to a ring. Then he punched a number and said, “John, this is Godwin. Your office called and they wonder where you are. Where are you?” Then he hung up. “How very odd,” he said.

  Betsy absently put the shoe in her hand onto her foot and came across the living room toward the kitchen limping because the shoes had unequal heels. She looked down at her feet. “Gosh, look what I did.”

  Godwin did and said, “I don’t think that’s a look that will catch on, boss.” He hung the dishtowel over the handle of the oven door and said, “It’s funny about John. I mean, it seriously isn’t like him to miss appointments.”

  “Could he be at home, sleeping off a hangover, with the phones turned off?”

  Godwin started to shake his head no, then thought about it. “You know, last time we broke up, he said afterwards that he was a mess. He said he missed me so much he was screwing up at work.”

  “There, see? But you know him better than I do. Is it possible he’s worse this time?”

  Godwin brightened at the idea, then thought about it and shook his head. “My broken heart wishes it was true, but my brain says no.” He came to sit across from her. “Still, I think we should go over there.”

  “What’s this ‘we,’ white man?” she said, quoting the punchline of an old joke.

  “Seriously. I’ve got a funny feeling about this.”

  “Well, then maybe you should go over there.” She looked at her watch. “It’s just past nine-thirty. If you leave now, you can be back by ten-thirty, can’t you?”

  She looked up to see him smiling in a pleading way at her, eyebrows lifted really high.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not going with you.”

  “Please? Oh, please, please, please? I’m scared to go alone!”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, I do. I’m afraid I’ll find him drunk or drugged—and . . . with someone else.” He bit his lower lip, ashamed at expressing that thought.

  “Oh, Goddy,” she sighed.

  “I know, I’m terrible for even thinking it. But if I walked in and found him with . . . someone, I’d do something really stupid, like scream and break things, and it would be just too horrible. But if you were with me, I could be brave and only cry a little.” He already looked on the edge of tears.

  “Oh, all right, all right. But when we get there, you go in first. Oh, and we have to find someone to watch the shop.”

  “Yes, okay, no problem. Nikki Marquez has been begging for extra hours. She’s going back to college in the fall, and is already working two other part-time jobs. She told me to call her any time.”

  “Well, if she’s working two other jobs, she probably won’t be available. But call her, call someone. I’m going to go put on a matching pair of shoes.”

  By the time she got back, Godwin was just hanging up
the phone. “Nikki will come in at ten. I told her we’d pay her for half a day even if we don’t need her that long.”

  “Fine.”

  Nikki was waiting at the front door when they went down. She was a tall, slim, beautiful girl with dark, curly hair and blue eyes in a square face. She didn’t look particularly Hispanic, probably because the last person to speak Spanish in her family was her great-grandfather and he, like his son and grandson, didn’t marry a Hispanic woman.

  She brought along a small red cooler. “Snacks, if that’s all right,” she explained. Nikki was diabetic and preferred fresh fruit and chilled fruit juices to the coffee, tea, and secret stash of cookies the shop offered.

  “We probably won’t be gone long enough for you to need a snack,” said Betsy, going swiftly through the opening-up procedure, “but you can work as much of the morning as you like. I really want to thank you for coming in on such terribly short notice.”

  “I was glad to, Ms. Devonshire.” Nikki was a very polite young woman, and a little in awe of a wealthy business-woman like Betsy.

  “Come on, Betsy,” said Godwin, now impatient to have it over with.

  “All right, I’m coming,” said Betsy, stooping to turn on the radio hidden behind a row of books in the box shelves. She looked around, picked up her purse, and said to Nikki, “I’ve got my cell phone if you have any problems.” Nikki had only worked a few times before in the shop, and Betsy felt a little anxious about leaving her all alone.

  “Yes, ma’am, but I’m sure I’ll be just fine. You take your time.” She looked from Betsy to Godwin, obviously wondering what this was all about.

  Betsy chose not to enlighten her. “I’ll call if we’re going to be more than an hour,” she promised and went out the door being held open by Godwin.

  “I’m too nervous, you drive,” said Godwin, so they went around back to Betsy’s new midnight-blue Buick. The parking lot had been resurfaced last year and yellow lines marked the reserved spaces for Betsy’s tenants. The Dumpster in its corner of the small lot was brimming over again, its lid lifted by bags of trash. Betsy made a mental note to call the company about getting a bigger one.

  She unlocked the doors and Godwin swung into the passenger seat, fumbling for the seat belt. “I wonder what we’ll find,” he muttered.

  “We’ll find him sitting at the breakfast table in a litter of toast crumbs, drinking his third cup of coffee and wondering why you haven’t called him this bright Sunday morning.”

  Godwin started to point out that today was, in fact, Friday, then got the joke and hooted with laughter instead. “Maybe you’re right,” he said and was comforted by the thought the rest of the ride.

  John’s house was a one-level ranch-style house built of orange brick with dark brown trim. It sat in a shallow but beautifully landscaped front yard. A big picture window in the front was underlined by a built-in flower box currently featuring deep yellow hyacinths. A modest front porch protected a wide front door with glass lights on either side of it. Though it was broad daylight, the front porch lights were on.

  Godwin went slowly up the curving walk, Betsy not far behind. The porch was a thick cement slab under a flat roof supported on slender wooden pillars painted gray. The door was deep green, its hardware highly polished brass. The thin curtains covering the tall, narrow lights on either side of the door were yellow. Betsy noted all this as she came up the walk and while Godwin pushed the doorbell over and over. She was thinking how attractive it was, and how like a photograph in a magazine. She realized she had never been inside the place. When there was no answer to the doorbell, which Betsy could hear pealing faintly, Godwin sighed and went into his trouser pocket for a key ring. “He forgot to take my spare key away from me,” he murmured, and turned back to the door, which he took his time unlocking. He opened it, and looked back at Betsy, who gestured at him to go in.

  “I said you had to go in first,” she reminded him. “You know he doesn’t like me.” That was true; on the few occasions when they’d met, John had made clear his contempt and resentment. He had tried at least once before to make Godwin give up his job at Crewel World. In Betsy’s opinion, that was because John was a control freak afraid Betsy’s trust in Godwin was causing him to become too independent.

  “All right,” he said, and went on into the house, calling, “John? John, are you here?”

  He left the door open behind him, and Betsy could see into a small reception area with gray, textured paper on the walls and a beautiful oriental rug in shades of gray and light yellow on the hardwood floor.

  “John?” Godwin called again.

  There was a small, long-legged table against the wall just big enough to hold a bronze statue of two nude wrestlers.

  Betsy could hear Godwin’s footfalls. Evidently the hardwood floor continued into the living room. They cut off abruptly, and Betsy wondered if there was another rug.

  “Oh, John!” she heard him shout. “Are you—oh, my God, oh my God! Nooooooooo!”

  Betsy ran into the house. Godwin was in fact standing on a larger version of the entry’s oriental rug, this one in a beautiful living room sparsely furnished with a gray leather couch, a glass and pewter coffee table, and a yellow leather chair so oddly shaped it had to be a costly designer piece. On the far wall was a magnificent fieldstone fireplace, and stretched on the floor in front of it was the body of a man.

  “Goddy?” said Betsy, coming to take him by the arm. He was trembling violently, and turned to clutch at her, breathing in odd gasps. She put her arms around him.

  After a few seconds he got enough control of himself to mutter, “I think he’s dead. What do you think, is he dead?”

  Without letting go, Betsy looked over at the body, that of a tall man with graying hair matted darkly at the back. His face was turned away. He was wearing a cream-colored sweater, straight-leg blue jeans, and brown sandals with a complicated arrangement of narrow straps. Betsy recognized the sweater: Godwin had one just like it, one he had knit himself.

  She looked at the man’s chest, which was not moving. She waited a very long time for it to move, but it didn’t.

  “Yes, I think he’s dead, Goddy. Are you sure it’s John?”

  “It must be. I can’t look. Will you go look? Wait, don’t leave me.”

  “We’ll look together.”

  The two approached the body, still holding onto one another, stepping sideways until they could look down and see the face.

  It was John. His eyes were closed, he might be asleep. Except he still wasn’t breathing. On the floor against his stomach was a statue made of iron in some abstract pattern that might be a man on a horse. There was a dark stain on the horse’s rump, and from this angle they could see that the shape of John’s skull was wrong.

  Betsy broke away from Godwin to stoop and touch the face. It was cold and stiff.

  Godwin began making a peculiar noise, like a siren, “Rrrrrrrrrrrrr,” getting higher and louder, until Betsy rose to take hold of him again.

  “Easy, easy, Goddy,” she said, and stroked the back of his head and neck. “Steady, now. Where’s the phone? We need to call nine-one-one.”

  “K-k-kitchen. No, don’t leave me! Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

  “Come on, then.” She put an arm around his shoulder and led him into the kitchen, which was in the back, separated by a counter from the living room. He had fallen silent, though he was still trembling. She stroked his back, a gesture she repeated while she lifted the receiver of the cordless wall phone with her other hand and punched 9-1-1.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” asked an operator very promptly.

  “My name is Betsy Devonshire and we’re at seven-twelve Larkspur in Excelsior, where there is a dead man in the living room.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  “Yes, he’s cold and stiff and not breathing.”

  “Do you know who the dead man is?” she asked.

  “Yes, he’s the owner of the house, his
name is John Nye. He didn’t come to work this morning and we came to see if something was wrong.”

  “Who’s this ‘we’? asked the operator.“Is someone else there as well?”

  “Godwin DuLac. Godwin has the key to the house. He is a friend of the deceased.”

  It seemed to take forever for a squad car to arrive, though it was only a few minutes. Siren blaring, it roared up Third Street, slowing when it saw them on the porch, waving at it. The driver was Lars Larson, whom they both knew. He got out quickly for a very tall, broad man encumbered with a utility belt and bulletproof vest, and came trotting up the walk.

  “What’s the problem here?” he asked.

  “John Nye is dead,” Betsy said, opening the door for him. “It looks as if something hit him on the head.” She and Godwin followed him into the house, Betsy still talking. “There’s a metal statue in front of the body.”

  Lars went to kneel beside the body. He felt the face and neck, and tried to move the top arm, which resisted. He looked at the statue but did not touch it. “Cold,” he remarked. “And stiff.” He looked at Godwin and asked, “Who was here last night?”

  “We don’t know,” said Betsy.

  A frown formed. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Godwin, don’t you live here?”

  “I used to,” Godwin confessed, head down. “He threw me out four days ago. He sent my clothes and things over to Crewel World yesterday in a big box.” The young man gestured to show the dimensions of the box.

  Another siren became audible, growing louder.

  “This probably happened last night,” said Lars. He looked at Godwin. “Where were you last night?”

  “Huh?” Talking of the box seemed to have sent Godwin from near hysteria into a deep gloom.

  “He was with me,” said Betsy quickly. “He’s been staying with me.” When Lars moved his pale blue gaze from Godwin to her and raised his golden eyebrows in surprise, she said, “In the guest room, for heaven’s sake!”

  Godwin made a barking sound and then began to laugh. The laughter quickly became hysterical and Betsy wrapped her arms around him and said, “Hush, hush, hush,” over and over.