Embroidered Truths

by Monica Ferris

  He turned. “Yes.”

  “We think Ms. Lavery is about to regain consciousness.”

  “I’m coming, too,” announced Betsy.

  Mike sighed, but shallowly. “All right.” As they started out the door, he asked, “What’s in the bag?”

  “My knitting.”

  This time the sigh was deeper.

  Susan lay perfectly flat on her hospital bed, a heart monitor beeping on one side, something clear drip-dripping from a plastic bag down a tube that led to a needle taped to the back of her left hand. Her head was wrapped in cloth with strands of that uncommonly-red hair poking over and under it. Her eyes were closed—the lids looked swollen, somehow—and there were scrapes on her left cheek and forehead. Her left elbow was bandaged, with a betadine stain visible a little above it. A thin woman, it was hard to see the shape of her under the sheet and coverlet; she might just have been a chance set of rumples.

  “Ooooh,” said Betsy softly, coming up to the bedside.

  Mike went to the other side, and the doctor went to stand beside him. “Speak to her,” said the doctor to Mike, but Mike looked at Betsy.

  “Susan, can you hear me?” There was no response, and Betsy reached under the coverlet for her right hand. “Susan? Susan, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”

  Was there the merest movement in those long fingers?

  “Susan, it’s Betsy Devonshire. You’re in the hospital, but you’re going to be all right. You’re safe here. Can you open your eyes?”

  Betsy bent over the still form. Susan’s eyes fluttered, but didn’t open, and her lips moved as she appeared to be trying to say something. Betsy leaned closer.

  “I believe she’s singing!” said Betsy. She turned her ear toward Susan’s mouth and listened hard. “She is singing, it’s . . . I don’t know.”

  “Uh, uh, uh-uh-uh uh uh,” sang Susan very quietly.

  Mike Malloy, his head near Betsy’s, chuckled, startling her. “It sounds like the theme they play at the Olympics,” he said.

  “You’re right, that’s what it is!” said Betsy. “Susan, are you singing the Olympic theme?”

  The song stopped, and Susan’s eyes opened. Betsy found herself staring into those big green depths from a distance of about four inches and hastily straightened. “Hello, Susan,” she said. “I’m here, and a police sergeant named Mike Malloy, and Doctor er—”

  “Dr. Behr,” said the doctor.

  “Dr. Behr,” finished Betsy.

  Mike stepped aside while the doctor became professional with Susan, looking into each of her eyes with a little flashlight, taking her pulse, asking her to wiggle her toes.

  “Hi,” murmured Susan at him, wiggling obediently.

  “Glad to have you with us,” he replied, smiling at her.

  When he was finished, Betsy asked, “Do you remember what happened?”

  Susan thought briefly. “I guess not,” she said. She was speaking quietly, not at all like her normal ebullient self. “Last thing I remember, I was exercising.” She frowned. “My head hurts. Did I fall? Did someone drop a weight on my head?”

  “No, nothing like that,” said Mike.

  She moved her head slightly so she could look at him. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name is Sergeant Mike Malloy, I’m with the Excelsior Police. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Susan looked at Betsy. “Are we in Excelsior?”

  “No, HCMC in Minneapolis.”

  Susan nodded and winced. “Good, I didn’t think Excelsior had a hospital. I am in a hospital, right?”

  “Yes, Hennepin County Medical Center.”

  “Good. Otherwise, you have very peculiar taste in bedroom furnishings.” She looked over at Dr. Behr. “Who’s he?”

  “Doctor Behr. He works here at the hospital.”

  “All right. What happened to me? My head hurts.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” said Betsy. “You were riding around in the trunk of a car, and somehow opened it, and fell out.”

  “I was not—” she began indignantly. “Oh, wait a minute, the handle glows in the dark, but I had to use my toes.” She moved the hand Betsy was holding. “How’d that happen?”

  “How did what happen?”

  “My hands were fastened together. Behind me.” She moved slightly, but as if to replace them behind her back.

  “Lie still,” said Dr. Behr.

  “Who are you?” she asked, frowning at him.

  “My name is Dr. Behr,” he explained, just as if he hadn’t already answered that question. He looked at Mike and then Betsy. “Short-term memory problems, common in concussion.” He leaned toward Susan and said, “You were injured when you fell out of a car. You are at the Hennepin County Medical Center, and you are going to be just fine.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said Susan. “Where did he go?”

  “Where did who go?” asked Betsy.

  “The man who put me in the trunk. Where did he go?”

  “Do you know who it was who put you in the trunk?”

  Susan frowned. “No.” Then she smiled. “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I forget.” She said this sadly, looking slightly ashamed for forgetting. Her eyes closed. “Tired,” she explained, and fell asleep.

  Twenty-four

  BETSY sat in the chair with the cushioned plastic seat and back, knitting. She was on the second sleeve of the entrelac sweater, decreasing every three rows as she neared the end. All she had to do after this was the knit two, purl two ribbing around the neck, sleeves and bottom. It was then she realized she hadn’t brought along the gray silk yarn she’d selected for the ribbing. Well, never mind. She put it away. The sweater had been fine, except for all those picked-up stitches. She disliked picking up stitches, there didn’t seem to be any rule for doing it properly, you just reached in there and grabbed.

  Malloy had gone down the hall for more vending-machine coffee. How he could drink that stuff was beyond Betsy.

  On the bed, Susan sighed deeply and opened her eyes. She saw Betsy, blinked once or twice and said, in a rusty voice, “Well, hello there.”

  “Hi, how are you feeling?”

  “Terrible. I have a headache.” She started to move her left hand, winced, tried again and saw the big bandage over the needle. “What’s this?”

  “You’re in Hennepin County Medical Center,” Betsy replied, trying not to sound as if this were the fourth time she’d explained this to Susan.

  “What happened? Was I in some kind of car accident? I hurt all over.”

  “Not exactly. You were being taken away by someone who had put you in the trunk of his car. But you opened the trunk and fell out. Fortunately the person behind you managed to stop before she ran over you.”

  Susan was staring at Betsy wide-eyed. “When did this happen?”

  “This evening—well, yesterday evening. It’s Thursday morning. Very early morning.” Betsy looked at her watch. “Four-twenty in the morning.”

  “I was tied up,” said Susan. “I think I remember ropes around me. Thin ropes. They hurt.” She frowned with the effort of trying to remember. “But that’s all I remember.”

  “Do you remember going to the health club?”

  Susan stared at Betsy. “Wow, you are a detective, how did you know about that?”

  “I have my methods.” Including being already told twice about the health club—the third time Susan hadn’t mentioned it.

  Susan looked skeptical, but said, “Three nights a week I go to my health club. I went tonight—okay, last night—and it was crowded. I had to park way in the back. I had a massage afterwards, an indulgence I allow myself once a week, so by the time I showered and dressed . . .” She stopped frowning. “I think it was dark out. It should have been, it was after seven.” She frowned and thought some more. “Then I was curled up in a dark place on some kind of itchy fabric that smelled of fish.” She wrinkled her nose. “That
must be the trunk you told me about.”

  “Yes,” agreed Betsy. This was more coherent than Susan had been the other times she’d come awake and talked. “How did you get out of the trunk?”

  “I don’t know. I must have, because I’m here, and all too often women who get stuffed into the trunks of cars don’t live to tell about it.” Her expression tightened, and she asked fearfully, “Was I raped?”

  “Apparently not. You had your work clothes on when you were brought in, and the only damage to them appears to have happened when you came out of that trunk.”

  “Trunk. Came out of a trunk.” Susan’s mouth twisted and the line between her eyebrows became a cleft as she tried to remember. “Nope, sorry.” She moved on the bed, winced, and closed her eyes. “I feel like he beat me up.”

  “You were struck on the head, and you hit it again when you came out onto the street. You’re also suffering from what Mike calls ‘road rash,’ which is scrapes and bruises from skidding and rolling on the street.”

  Susan nodded. “Yep, that’s what it feels like. Especially my left elbow.” She smiled, still without opening her eyes. “Why is the human left elbow funny?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The door opened, and Mike was back. “How’s she doing?”

  Susan opened her eyes. “Are you Mike?”

  He stopped short, staring at her. “Awake for real, I believe,” he said. “Yes, I’m Sergeant Mike Malloy, Excelsior Police.”

  “Why Excelsior? Did I fall out of the trunk in Excelsior?”

  “No, I’m here because I’m in charge of the investigation into John Nye’s murder.”

  “What does—oh.” Her eyes closed again. “You think maybe David Shaker did this to me.”

  “Maybe he did,” said Betsy.

  “It’s also possible that this was a random kidnapping, someone looking for a woman to take away, assault, and possibly even murder,” said Mike.

  “He’s saying that because he wants the murderer of John Nye to be Godwin.” Betsy felt her fingers clench angrily around her knitting, and immediately released them. This was not the time to pick a fight with Mike.

  “I’m looking at everything, trying to figure out what happened,” said Mike, also lightening his tone, and Betsy looked up at him in surprise.

  It was then she saw he had a brown paper bag, grocery-store sized, in one hand. “What’s in there?” she asked, thinking it might be something to eat, or a six-pack of Diet Pepsi. She could use some of either. Maybe it was both.

  Mike came to the bedside table and put the bag on it. The way he lifted it, the way it sounded being put down, there were no weighty containers of soft drinks in it.

  “Evidence,” he pronounced, and opened the bag. From it he lifted numerous tangled lengths of thin rope of a shiny white nylon.

  “Is this what was used to tie Susan up?” Betsy asked, reaching to take a length of the stuff from Mike’s hand.

  “Yes,” he said, holding a piece himself and shaking the rest off it into the bag.

  He held it out to Susan, who stared at it, then at him, shrugging and shaking her head. It set off no memories in her mind.

  Betsy looked closer at her own piece. It wasn’t tangled, it was knotted. Whoever had cut it off Susan had the intelligence to cut it between the knots, so they were preserved. The long knot she was looking at was a sheepshank, an arrangement used to shorten a length of rope that was already tied at either end.

  “What, you see something there?” asked Mike, alerted by the way she was looking at the rope.

  “Give me another piece,” Betsy ordered.

  “Sure. Here.” This was two ends tied together in a sheet-bend, a version of the square knot.

  “He must have been going to untie you,” said Betsy to Susan. “Probably after you were dead.”

  Susan stared at the knot in Betsy’s hand. “How do you know?”

  “Because this can come undone fairly easily. Just—” She was reaching for the place in the knot to pull to make it come apart.

  “Don’t!” barked Mike. “That’s evidence, remember?”

  “Oh, yes. Of course. Sorry.” She handed it back. “But now I know who did this to you, Susan.”

  “You do?” She stared at Betsy.

  “Certainly. Of Shaker and D’Agnosto, which one is a sailor, familiar with knots?”

  “D’Agnosto!” said Susan.

  “That’s why his trunk smelled of fish.” Betsy chuckled. “And that’s why you woke up the first time singing the Olympic theme song.”

  “I did? Why?”

  “Because he drives an Audi, and the emblem of an Audi is four interlocked rings, not unlike the Olympic symbol.” She held out her hand to Mike. “Show me all those knots, I’ll bet not one is a granny.”

  Mike did. And not one was.

  “I’ll grant you that if these are sailor knots, and one of your suspects is a sailor,” said Mike, “then you’ve got something. What I want to know is how come you know so much about knots.”

  “Back in my youth, I was a Navy WAVE. For about six months, I dated a bosun’s mate. He taught me a lot of sea lore, like white work and the rules of encounter at sea—and knots.” Betsy’s eyes went distant for a few moments. “And other things.”

  She came back to the present with a bump when Mike said, “I suppose you think this proves Mr. D’Agnosto murdered John Nye.”

  “Oh, no,” said Betsy, surprised at him. “I think Mr. D’Agnosto tried to kill Susan because she found out he was stealing money from Hanson, Wellborn, and Smith. John Nye’s and Walter D’Agnosto’s paths never crossed.”

  “Not never,” said Susan sleepily.

  Betsy had the familiar feeling of her ears growing big points that swiveled around. “What do you mean, ‘not never’?”

  “Well, they knew each other. D’Agnosto was the chief financial officer. Any time money entered the equation, D’Agnosto had to be notified. And you know lawyers, money is always part of the equation.”

  Betsy thought about that. “There was that deal John dreamed up to give an executive a lucrative compensation plan. Did D’Agnosto have anything to do with that?”

  “No, no, no. That had nothing to do with money coming to the firm, except the fee, of course.” She sighed, and her eyes closed. “Want to sleep now.”

  “Hold on,” said Mike, reaching for the call button. He said to Betsy, “People with concussions aren’t supposed to sleep.”

  “Well, what has she been doing up til now?” asked Betsy crossly.

  “That was being unconscious. This is sleep.”

  “Oh.” Betsy sat down and began to put her knitting away. She was pretty sure they were going to be sent away so Susan could rest, if not sleep.

  “So what do you think, Susan,” asked Mike, “is Betsy right or wrong to say D’Agnosto had nothing to do with John Nye’s death?”

  “I dunno,” murmured Susan.

  “Come on, talk to us,” he persisted. “Did you get a look at the man who pushed you into the trunk?”

  “I don’t remember,” said Susan even more softly.

  Betsy asked, “Susan, tell me about that executive compensation plan John figured out. You did help with the research on it, didn’t you?”

  “Mm hm,” said Susan, barely audible now.

  “I think it may be important,” said Betsy.

  Mike looked at her, puzzled. Betsy shook her head no, and waggled her eyebrows at him. She was trying to keep Susan awake until the nurse came, that was all. He nodded comprehension.

  “Important? Not important,” Susan said. “Can’t be important.” She sounded more awake, if somewhat more fuddled. She blinked at the ceiling.

  “Why not?” asked Betsy.

  “The executive remun—remumeration—renumeration—wasn’ for a member of the firm. Partners share in the profits, ever’one else gets a 401-K plan. We don’ do pensions.” Her eyes had closed again.

  “Golden parachute! Oh my! Um, how much di
d the firm charge to come up with the plan?”

  The door to the room opened and a nurse came in. “Yes?” she said, going to the bed and touching Susan’s forehead.

  “Well, hi, there!” said Susan, smiling up at her.

  “Welcome back, Ms. Lavery,” said the nurse. “How do you feel?”

  “Sleepy. Can you send these two away so I can sleep?” She moved her head to indicate Betsy and Mike.

  Mike said, “I seem to remember being taught that you don’t let people with concussions fall asleep.”

  “Nowadays we do let them sleep, we just wake them up every fifteen minutes to see how they’re doing.”

  “So go away,” said Susan. “Let me have my fifteen-minute nap.”

  “All right,” said Betsy, turning around, bending down, to make sure nothing had fallen out of her purse or knitting bag to roll away. “Mike?”

  “Yes, all right.” He said to Susan, “I’ll check back on you later today.”

  “Me, too,” said Betsy, impatient now to be gone. “Come on, we’ll ride down in the elevator together. There’s something I want to ask you.”

  “Jesus sufferin’ Christ,” sighed Mike, following her out.

  Twenty-five

  “WELL?” growled Mike in the elevator, but Betsy waited “until a nurse—a far cry from the stiffly starched, all-in-white women of Betsy’s youth; this one wore clean but rumpled crayon-blue scrubs with a pattern of goldfish printed on it—got off one floor down.

  “I want to come with you while you arrest Walter D’Agnosto.”

  He looked at her, pale eyebrows raised high on his freckled face. “Why should I let you do that?”

  “Because he murdered John Nye, too.”

  “Wait a second, you told me not three minutes ago that David Shaker was the murderer.”

  “That was before Susan mentioned the golden parachute.”

  “No, no, you were the one who said ‘golden parachute.’”

  “Now don’t get technical. She was talking about the same thing, a method of putting aside money for an executive in case he quits before retirement.”

  “All right. So?”

  “Well, John Nye invented a false identity and used it to open a bank account over in Wisconsin.”