Embroidered Truths

by Monica Ferris

  Lars was bustling around the little kitchen, whistling something loud and off-key, looking fit to burst with good news.

  Betsy was pretty sure now she knew what it was, but didn’t say anything: first, not to spoil their joy in telling her, and second, what if she was wrong?

  Lars took a plate out of the oven. It was piled high with toast. He opened the refrigerator and brought out a Mason jar full of raspberry preserves. He stuck a knife into the jam, and placed it with a flourish in front of her.

  “We’re having a baby!” he said.

  As soon as she got home, Betsy phoned the jail and found out there was no one to fetch a prisoner on weekends unless the caller was an attorney. She sighed deeply and said she’d call back Monday.

  She went into the guest room and sat down at Godwin’s laptop with even greater reluctance than she’d had opening John’s e-mail messages. But very likely at this minute Mike Malloy was rummaging through Godwin’s private life.

  She started Godwin’s computer and found it wanted a password. She tried a few of the more obvious ones and none worked. Annoyed—and relieved—she shut it down.

  Then she recollected that she had some urgent, if more mundane, tasks to complete, and spent the next several hours doing books. She also made a record of who had volunteered to help out in the shop and how many hours each had worked. She didn’t know what use she would make of that record, but it was something she felt she needed to know.

  That done, she cleaned her apartment and did laundry, then had an early supper and sat down with her entrelac pattern. It took a little while to get used to knitting sideways, but at least she wasn’t changing colors of yarn all the time. She’d changed from knitting in the round to knitting straight on the body, and was now at the neck. “Work 7 step5 Rectangles, then out 2 step6 TTri and finish row with 7 step5 Recs.” she read. She struggled awhile, then, rather abruptly, something in her brain flipped over, and she understood. She continued knitting for another forty minutes, then put it aside.

  It was nearly bedtime by then. She spread a sheet saved for the purpose on the little table in the dining nook and put Sophie up on it and combed her thick fur, taking the collected hair off as it clogged the brush and putting it into a Ziploc bag already half-full. Sophie shed year-round, but most heavily in the spring. If she was not brushed every few days, the fur matted so horribly that it could not be picked apart and combed out. The year that happened, Betsy had had to resort to scissors. When the mats were cut out, the cat lost her ovoid silhouette and looked as if some small predator had taken bites out of her.

  Fortunately, Sophie loved being groomed and started pacing and mewing impatiently as soon as she saw the sheet being spread on the table. She purred through the entire process, and kept turning and pushing her face against the comb, eyes half-closed in pleasure.

  It also gave pleasure to Betsy, happy she could at least bring comfort and joy to one member of her household.

  That finished, they retired for the night.

  BY nine the next morning, Betsy was at the jail, asking to see Godwin. She had dressed carefully in a good, navy-blue, linen-blend suit, snow-white blouse, and spectator shoes. She ostentatiously carried a notebook in one hand. All this—or the fact that she’d been there before—shortened her wait, and soon she was sitting in the depressing little room, waiting for Godwin.

  He came in looking a whole lot less like a dog being given a bath than last time. Amazingly, his jumpsuit fit him. It was an old one, washed so many times it was more a peach color than the by-God orange he’d worn before. He looked almost chipper, and brightened further when he saw her. He threw up his hands and made an admiring face at her before sitting down and picking up the phone.

  “You look smashing!” he said into the receiver.

  “Thank you, and you look rather fine yourself.”

  “Oh, this old thing?” he said, and rocked to one side with laughter.

  “All right, young man, explain yourself,” she ordered.

  “Well, you know that old saying, ‘In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’?”

  She nodded.

  “In Quad Eleven, the one most nearly sane is in charge.”

  “I thought the guards were in charge.”

  “They can’t be everywhere all the time. So they rely on sensible people to help keep the peace. In Quad Eleven, c’est moi.” He pointed to himself, grandly smirking. “I helped Felix write a letter to his dog-wife; found out that Dorothy really is transgendered and was on estrogen before she got arrested and so she’s really suffering, though they won’t give her estrogen while she’s here; and I arranged for some of us to sit for half an hour twice a day while Mark repeats wonderful stories one of his voices tells him. He should write them down, some of them are wonderfully sad and some are so romantic.” He heaved a dramatic sigh.

  “Godwin, you are the most amazing person I have ever known,” said Betsy sincerely.

  “I am?” he said. “Thank you, but how so?”

  “I swear, only you could find the beauty part of being in jail.”

  “Well, it isn’t all roses. I don’t suppose you have any good news for me?”

  “How’s this: Jill and Lars are pregnant!”

  His mouth fell open. “Hey, good for them! When is it due?”

  “Around Christmas or New Year’s.”

  “How jolly! Boy or girl?”

  “They don’t know yet, and may not want to know. They’re back and forth about that.”

  “Buying presents for them this year will be easy, anyhow.” His good mood suddenly vanished, as if someone had let all the air out of it. “If I’m able to go shopping for presents.”

  “Oh, of course you’ll be shopping!”

  “But you haven’t made any progress yet, have you?”

  “Well . . . some. I went through John’s computer and found some interesting things. Did you know he had set up a different identity?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He was salting money away in an account in Menomonee, Wisconsin, under the name Christopher Bright. Do you have any idea why he might want to do that?”

  Godwin stared at her through the Plexiglas window. “Not a clue. How strange.”

  “Does the name Christopher Bright mean anything to you?”

  “No.” He thought about it a few moments, then shook his head and repeated, “No.”

  “Did John go out of town a lot?”

  “No, not very often. Well, once in awhile, and then just for a day or overnight. Interviewing people about cases he was working on. Witnesses, or clients.”

  “Did he fly or drive?”

  “Either, or. Sometimes one, sometimes the other.”

  “Can you remember the last time he drove out and back in a single day?”

  Godwin thought, casting his eyes upward, wrapping a forefinger around his chin. “About a week before we went to Mexico. I can’t remember the exact date, though maybe I could if I had a calendar. I remember it was on a weekday; he left early to get out ahead of the rush hour, and he took me out to dinner that night.”

  Betsy wrote that down. “Very good,” she said, nodding. “Now, I have another question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’ve got the name of someone John was seeing.” Betsy went back a page, where she had written it down. “Beni—spelled Bee, ee, en, eye—Greenleaf. Do you know him?”

  “Beni, Beni . . . No, I don’t think so—wait, yes, I do! Skinny little twerp with a home perm and hardly any manners?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never seen him. All I have is his name. He and John exchanged e-mails and John invited him out for coffee one night and . . . to the house the day he was killed.”

  “Him? John brought him into our house? My God, what was he thinking?”

  “Is Beni dangerous?”

  “Dangerous?” Godwin snorted. “God, no! Oh, wait a second, that’s not the answer you’re looking for, is it?”

&
nbsp; “No, but don’t change it to make me happy. Tell me about him.”

  “Yeah, well, what can I say? Beni might be dangerous to an ant with a broken leg, but only by accidentally squashing it trying to put a splint on.”

  Betsy grimaced. That was not at all what she wanted to hear. “Still, I want to talk to him. He was among the last to see John alive. Where can I find him?”

  “I have no idea where he lives. Try Vera’s. He hangs out there most evenings, hoping to be picked up.”

  “Is Vera’s a bar?”

  “No, a coffeehouse. Don’t go alone—and don’t go with a man, if you want Beni to talk to you.”

  Eighteen

  FROM the Adult Detention Center, Betsy walked a few blocks north and west, to the IDS Center, a tall, green-glass building on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. It was Minneapolis’s first modern skyscraper, shaped like four very wide, shallow steps up, a broad landing, and four steps down—set on end. Inside it still had the tall escalators Mary Tyler Moore rode under the opening credits of her old television sitcom.

  Betsy went to the bank of elevators on the west side and rode up to the thirtieth floor. She walked into a very nice reception area, all marble and hand-loomed art carpets—were there any poor lawyers? she wondered—where an attractive black woman with a professional air spoke into her phone: “Ms. Kravchenko, there is a Ms. Devonshire here to see you.”

  Soon a petite woman with a Slavic face and short straight hair a peculiar light brown color came into the lobby area. She was wearing a black skirt and a white blouse with ruffles that stood up on her shoulders and made dizzy circles around her wrists. “I don’t think I’ve ever met you, have I? And yet you look familiar.” She had a very faint Russian accent that only added to her allure.

  “I came to see Mr. Nye summer before last.”

  “Oh, yes.” A speculative glint flickered in Tasha Kravchenko’s slanted eyes. “Now I remember, you have the needlework store that Mr. DuLac worked in. Will you come with me?” She turned and walked back the way she had come in, Betsy following.

  They came to a double row of cubicles which fronted a double row of private offices. Tasha turned into one and said, “Perhaps we should use Mr. Nye’s office, we can be more private in there,” and led her into a nice office with paneled walls, furnished with a soft carpet and two green wing chairs facing a mahogany desk Betsy remembered from her first visit here. It was profoundly quiet in the office. Betsy wondered if special instructions were given to the architects or decorators when putting up attorneys’ offices to use extra insulation in the walls. She was sure someone could have a huge tantrum in here without disturbing anyone in the offices on either side.

  Tasha gestured at the chairs, and Betsy turned the left one towards the other—it was surprisingly lightweight—and Tasha did the same, so they could sit facing one another.

  “Now, how may I help you?” asked Tasha.

  “I am looking into the circumstances surrounding the death of John Nye.”

  A tiny smile flickered across that exotic face. “I can understand why you don’t think Godwin did it. He is a friend as well as a good employee, am I right? You came to defend him that first time you visited this office.”

  “I came primarily to ask Mr. Nye to confirm some work he had done for an artist. But yes, I defended Godwin. He is my most valuable employee as well as a good friend.”

  “All right, I understand. I also understand that you do some investigating of crimes. But you are an amateur, right? So don’t you think you should leave this to the police?”

  “No, I don’t. I have hired Marvin Lebowski to represent Godwin, and he has said I may act on his behalf in conducting an investigation.”

  She was surprised, and was not able to hide it. “You are officially working for Mr. Lebowski?”

  “Yes. He would normally hire a private investigator—and he might still do so—but he has decided to allow me to see what I can find first.” Betsy shrugged. “If I am successful, it will save me the money for a PI’s fee.”

  “That is . . . interesting.” Which, wondered Betsy, my doing private investigations or that I’m able to afford Marvin Lebowski?

  She tried, “I have conducted successful investigations before.”

  “Are you also putting up the bail so Godwin can get out?”

  Oh. “No, I can’t afford both Mr. Lebowski and a hundred thousand dollars for a bail bondsman.”

  Tasha smiled, showing small, white teeth. She seemed to have felt she’d won a point, or perhaps learned something about Betsy, without Betsy knowing it. In any case, she relaxed in the chair as much as its stiff design would allow. “I understand. Very well, what do you want to ask me about?”

  Betsy opened her notebook. “Tell me something about Hanson, Wellborn, and Smith. How big a company is it?”

  “There are thirty partners and a little over or under one hundred attorneys—people come and go all the time.”

  “When was it founded?”

  “Let me think. Around 1939, I believe.”

  “Could you tell me who some of the clients are?”

  Tasha frowned prettily. “I suppose our most important client is Sweetwater. We handle all their product-failure litigation. We also handle St. Luke’s and Children’s Hospital’s malpractice litigation.”

  Betsy nodded. “Impressive. What did Mr. Nye specialize in?”

  “He was good at taking raw information, analyzing it, and making it into plans of action,” said Tasha. “He was also what they call a good rainmaker.”

  “‘Rainmaker’?”

  “He could find new business for the firm.”

  “The partners must have found that equally valuable,” said Betsy. “How long did you work for Mr. Nye?”

  “Four years. Well, nearly four years—three years and ten months, actually.”

  “What was he like to work for?”

  Was there the merest hesitation? “He worked very hard. He was a good lawyer, he knew what he was doing all the time. That is, he knew the law—no, he understood the law. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think so. Do you mean that he hadn’t just memorized a bunch of rules, he understood how the law could be used to advantage?”

  Tasha smiled. “Yes, exactly. That is exactly what I mean. When you combine that with his ability to analyze, you can see he was a very valuable person.” She gestured at Betsy to write that down.

  Betsy did, then asked, “Did you like him?”

  Again that brief hesitation. “It was more that I admired him. He was very . . . focused on his work. He liked everything to be done exactly right.” She raised her chin. “I was the secretary who lasted the longest with him because I could be as . . . correct, I think that is the word, in my work as he was in his.”

  “Perhaps ‘accurate’ is the word you want.”

  Tasha thought about that. “Yes, I believe you are right.”

  “Did you like working for him?”

  “Yes.” A firm nod. “He was pleasant and did not lose his temper, or not very often. He was going to be a partner in this law firm, and he said I could still be his secretary when that happened. I was looking forward to that.” She added, confidentially, “Secretary to a partner in a law firm, that is a good position.” She nodded. “More money, too, that would be nice. He said I would have a raise.”

  “Was he an easy boss?”

  “No, not at all.” But Tasha didn’t think that a negative. “He was proud of me, he would brag about me, he would say, ‘Here is a woman who knows how to work!’” This time her eyes lit up and her chin was very high. Then she looked out of the corner of her eyes at Betsy and laughed softly. “You don’t think that is so wonderful.”

  “Oh, but I do! To find someone to work with who appreciates your efforts, who admires your hard work, that’s always a blessing.” Betsy made and note and said, “Now, I didn’t know him well, but I have gathered that he could be difficult, because he had strong feelings about how
things should be done, and preferred things to be done his way. He would get . . . unhappy when he couldn’t get others to agree to go along with him.”

  “Well, yes, but that was because he was so very intelligent, and so was pretty generally right.” Tasha frowned and shifted position slightly. “He was a good man, very talented,” she said, taking the edge off his being difficult. “But perhaps not patient.”

  “I understand why you would think well of him. You must have been a good match for him.”

  She nodded proudly. “Yes, I was.” Then her face went sad. “I will miss him.”

  “I’m sure of that, too. Will you be able to stay on here at the law firm?”

  “I don’t know yet. I don’t even know if I want to.”

  Taking the opening, Betsy asked, “Did John Nye have any enemies here at Hanson, Wellborn, and Smith?”

  Tasha looked scandalized. “That is not a nice question!”

  “Murder is not nice.”

  She frowned. “You are right there, certainly.” She shifted uncomfortably, then said with firmness, “But I am sure no one at this place would have ever, ever thought to murder Mr. Nye. Such an idea is ridiculous.”

  “I understand that John’s superior here was Mr. David Shaker. Did you know him?”

  “Of course I know him. I see him—I saw him every day, or nearly every day.”

  “Did he and John get along?”

  “Of course they did. Mostly.”

  “Were they friends?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t think I should say that. They had a . . . professional relationship. Very correct. Mr. Shaker is a partner, after all, and John was a senior associate, but still . . . only an associate.”

  “How long had John worked here?”

  “I don’t know. I was hired five years ago, and I worked for a year for two new attorneys, then for Mr. Nye and Preston Marson. Mr. Marson quit a year ago and I have worked just for John ever since. I have heard that Mr. Nye’s work was always very good. I remember it was only a few weeks ago that Mr. Kedge, who is a managing partner”—she said that title with awe—“said to Mr. Nye, right in front of me, that he never knew anyone who understood the law on executive compensation as well as he did.” Tasha inhaled, basking in the reflected glory of that moment.