But then Irene began to look crestfallen. “I wanted it out this year,” she said. “It would be more timely that way.”
“I understand that. And I’m sorry, but it’s too late to do it properly this year. I mean, think about it, Irene. If I bought a dozen patterns from you and sold even as many as eight or ten, that wouldn’t make it worth your while. Besides there is work still to be done. You need to turn these pages into a booklet, and get it properly printed. And you’ll want a color photograph of the model for the front, right? Plus you need to get the fabric cut to size—and if you’re going to include the fabric, you might want to kit it up properly and include the floss. This will take a lot of time and cost you a certain amount of money. You don’t want to do all that for such a small return. I think this should go to a needlework publisher, one with the resources to give it the attention it deserves. I can’t believe there aren’t a whole lot of other needlework shop owners around the country who would be very happy to offer it. I hope you will remember me when it is published, because I would love to debut it in my shop. Let’s think about doing that next year. You should aim for a date in, say, mid-August.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Irene, a bit petulantly, folding up her model.
The door went bing-bong, and Betsy looked around to see Godwin coming in from a late lunch.
“Hey, Irene!” he said chirpily as he entered. “What brings you to our precinct?”
“Precinct?” she echoed, a little alarmed, as if Godwin were threatening her with the police. So maybe she did have an idea that there might be more than one kind of danger in accusing a Wiccan of murder.
He gestured around the shop. “To our district, our area, our little world?”
Betsy said, “She’s designed a cross-stitch pattern, a gorgeous thing. She wants us to sell it in the shop.”
“Really? A pattern? Can I see it?” He hustled to the table and took the folded cloth from her hand.
Betsy knew Irene didn’t like Godwin, partly because of his slanted sense of humor but mostly because he was gay, and she was afraid of gay people. On the other hand, he was a very gifted stitcher with an excellent sense of design, and she had come to appreciate that. So after a brief tussle, she opened her fist and let him take and unfold her work. He smoothed it with both hands onto the table and there was a breathless silence.
“Oh. My. God.” He cocked his head first to one side and then to the other. He stepped back and came close and bent very close over it and stepped back again. “Irene, this is genius ! It’s marvelously spooky! I love the fish! Have you really made a pattern?” Betsy handed him the stapled pages. “Why, this is terrific! This is actually doable!”
He looked at Betsy. “We’re going to sell it, of course,” he said.
“Goddy, she made this pattern as a kind of commentary on the witch who lives among us.”
Godwin frowned at her, then looked again at the pattern. “Oh, my God,” he said again, but with a totally different intonation.
Betsy said, “I told her we would like to sell it, but that we’re about to put out our Christmas things and so couldn’t give it the attention it deserves.”
Irene was looking at Godwin as Betsy spoke, so she felt safe raising and lowering her eyebrows and twiddling her fingers over her head.
“Oh, my gosh, I forgot! You’re right, all our Halloween stuff is about to go into storage until next year.” He looked at Irene. “How about next year?” He looked at Betsy.
Betsy nodded approvingly. “Next year.”
Six
ON autopsy, the medical examiner could find no anatomic cause of death for Ryan McMurphy. No clot in the brain, no hidden stab wound, no internal rupture. Essentially, Ryan simply stopped breathing; and after a while, his heart stopped, too. So Dr. Rendelle took a few samples from the body, wrote “Natural” on the death certificate under “Cause of Death,” signed it, and released the body.
Ryan was given a quiet, private funeral and tucked away beside his grandparents in Excelsior’s hilltop cemetery. His bereaved wife took her two sad children home, where she closed her door against the curious questions of the town and waited for the surprisingly substantial life insurance policy to be cashed in.
But the failure to find a cause of death only increased the talk. Business at The Barleywine dropped off alarmingly, and after a day or two of it, Leona came into Crewel World.
“Betsy, have you made any progress in finding the source of the gossip about me?”
“No, and it’s getting worse, isn’t it?” said Betsy.
“Yes. There seem to be more people every day who think I am responsible for Ryan’s death.”
“The medical examiner said in very clear language that he died of natural causes.”
“Betsy, he was thirty-four years old, he wasn’t weak or sickly, and he worked at a physically demanding job. It’s hard not to think there was something unnatural about his dying.”
“All right, I’m sure things can be missed even on autopsy. It’s possible the medical examiner didn’t see a very small tumor deep in his brain, or maybe there was some kind of heart problem that doesn’t show. Or maybe it was cumulative. His heavy drinking had to have affected his whole system.”
“Then why is this gossip persisting? I’m sure someone is stirring it up. But who? Who keeps saying these ugly things about me?” There was agony in the questions; Leona’s dark eyes were filled with anxiety.
Irene Potter, thought Betsy, though she said, “I don’t know.”
“You’ve proven yourself a good detective, Betsy. Please, won’t you try to find out who it is—and make her stop?”
“Her? What makes you think it’s a woman?”
Leona’s eyes flickered. “I don’t know that it’s a woman. It just makes sense to me that it would be.”
HARVEY Fogelman was concerned about Shelly. Faced with a deadline to finish that design for Kreinik, she nevertheless had abandoned her workroom and instead brought things up to the living room. This put him in the awkward position of trying not to see what it was—it was supposed to be a secret. He knew it was a cross-stitch pattern, but nothing else. But he couldn’t help getting glimpses of it when she had it sitting out on the coffee table. She had damaged the edge of the table trying to set up her Dazor light on it, and finally had to ask for his help.
Keeping the project upstairs was a huge nuisance, because she had to keep putting it away when company was coming over. She kept a light blanket handy for when a casual visitor dropped by, and it seemed there were a lot of visitors lately.
There was something Harvey needed to talk to her about, something urgent and long overdue, but how could he when she was already in such distress? At last he said, “Look, this is driving you crazy. I don’t understand why you can’t go back to using your sewing room.”
Shelly said the room made her uncomfortable and she couldn’t work in it while feeling uncomfortable. Harvey couldn’t see what the problem was. He had taken the futon to Goodwill and called in ServiceMaster to clean the room from top to bottom. He had rearranged the furniture and even painted the walls a pale blue-green—her favorite color.
This needed to be resolved, and soon.
Now, this morning, he suggested as gently as he could that they both should go down there one more time and she could perhaps explain exactly what was wrong.
So before she had to leave for her teaching job at Excelsior Elementary, they went downstairs. Normally, just stepping inside brought her a feeling of cozy pleasure; he’d seen it on her face before. But he watched her step into the room and stop short, her face expressing trepidation and distaste. Even her long-eared dog, Portia (because she was made of portions of many breeds), stood outside the door, making small whining noises.
“Can’t you tell?” she said, turning to him, her eyes filling with tears. “Can’t you smell it? It smells of death in here!”
“Oh, sweetheart, there, there, darling,” he said, coming in to take her elegant
figure into his arms. He could feel her trembling even while at the same time he marveled at how well she fit against him. This affair had to be right; he was really falling in love, he had to do something soon, or there would be a huge explosion, and she would be hurt—he couldn’t have that. “There, there,” he murmured, stroking her back, inhaling the fragrance of her hair. But how was he going to tell her?
Then he paused, frowned, lifted his head to draw a testing breath through his nose.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “You know, you’re right. It smells like a dead mouse in here.”
AS closing time approached, Godwin became antsy, moving around the shop, picking up objects and putting them down, dusting, needlessly rearranging displays. When he was worried or upset, Godwin cleaned. Betsy finally called him on it.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, no, what could be wrong?”
“You seem to be expecting a problem. Do you want to call off dinner?” Now and again one of them would invite the other to a cozy little supper. Godwin had done it this time.
Godwin smiled. “Not a problem.”
Betsy smiled back. “Rafael?”
Godwin nodded wordlessly. “You’ve met him but you haven’t really met him. I’ve invited him to dinner tonight, too, so you two can talk.”
“All right,” said Betsy, “I’ve been hoping for a chance to have a real conversation with him. It hasn’t been all that long for you two, but it seems to be serious.”
Godwin tried an indifferent shrug and failed. “It is,” he muttered, drawing his shoulders up again.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you like him?” asked Betsy, both kind and curious and therefore persistent.
“I don’t know!” repeated Godwin. “And that’s the problem. I mean, he has met my usual requirements: he’s good-looking, he has his own condo, his own car, his own money, and he’s not a rich attorney with control problems.”
Godwin had lived for a half dozen years with a wealthy attorney who was very controlling. The attorney had had to die for Godwin to escape the relationship. There had followed a series of young men who seemed more anxious to have regular meals and a place to sleep than to be sincere friends. Godwin had stopped allowing that, but Betsy still felt he set the bar too low.
“Is there a ‘but’ in there somewhere?” she asked now.
“Yeee-ess, I think so. We get along so well. We’re not alike at all, but he makes me laugh, and I can make him laugh, too. We never fight—but maybe that’s because I’m afraid of getting into a fight. He’s so wonderful, I’d be just devastated if we stopped getting along.” Godwin was blinking rapidly in an attempt to hold back tears. “Do you know what he calls me?”
“What?”
“Gorrión. He says it means ‘sparrow.’ Is that good or bad?”
“What does he say?”
“He says it’s because I’m small but brave—I think he means ‘cocky.’ He says he caught a sparrow once, and while it was helpless in his grip, it reached around with its little beak and bit his thumb. ‘Brave,’ he says. Or maybe he means ‘defiant’?”
“I think he means ‘brave.’” Betsy touched him on the arm while she thought for a few moments. “Maybe if you’re so afraid of breaking up, you should just go ahead and say or do whatever you like. If you do quarrel, it was never meant to be, and if you don’t, then you can relax and enjoy his friendship.”
Godwin thought about that and then nodded. “Yes, I see what you mean. A relationship based on false premises isn’t real and won’t last, no matter how hard I try.”
“Right.”
“On the other hand,” said Godwin, like a child dragging at the hand of someone taking him to a place he doesn’t want to go, “I really, really like him. I’m ready to do a little pretending if that means he’ll stay around. What I would like for you to do is take a good, close look at him tonight. Tell me what you think.”
“All right. Goddy, you must know that if you like him, I’ll like him.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s true.” But in a few minutes Betsy realized that Godwin was still upset. She saw him in the far back of the shop, scrubbing out the coffeemaker.
DINNER was a success. Godwin could cook only a few dishes, but he did them exceedingly well. He served roast chicken stuffed with herbed bread crumbs and water chestnuts, autumn squash in a butter sauce flavored with sage and nutmeg, and fresh green beans steamed with slivered almonds. Dessert was vanilla ice cream under a hot applesauce he’d made himself with ginger, cloves, and lots of cinnamon.
Godwin’s apartment was small and inexpensive, located on the third floor of the old hardware store, now remodeled and restored. He could have afforded better, especially if he’d chosen to live outside Excelsior, but he loved living in this little town—and besides, he was always saving for a trip to Mexico or Costa Rica or Japan or, presently, Italy.
His great sense of style had turned the small place into a little gem of rich colors and shining surfaces.
“I have a great-aunt in Venice,” said Rafael, when talk turned toward travel.
“You do?” said Godwin, surprised.
“So you’re part Italian?” asked Betsy.
“Yes,” nodded Rafael. “That part of the family goes back a very long way, but she and I . . .” He paused. “Es la última de la dinastía. That means ‘She is the last of the dynasty.’ Her name is Sophia.” He smiled. “Like your cat. She is not unlike your Sophie, at that. She is large, gray and white, very manipulative—are not all cats manipulators?—and lazy in such a grand way she makes it seem like a gift.” His smile turned a little sour. “She does not approve of me. Oh, not because I am gay, there are always gay people in any family. But because I refuse to marry. She says of course I might have a boyfriend instead of a mistress. To preserve the dynasty, she thinks I should marry and have a son. But I will not do that to a good woman.”
“Good for you!” said Betsy.
“Still, it’s kind of sad,” said Godwin, and the look Rafael gave him made Betsy’s heart turn over in her breast. Godwin had said he was afraid he had nothing in common with Rafael. Betsy could see that was not true. Godwin had an understanding and compassionate nature that was shared and appreciated by his new friend.
LEONA wrapped things up in the microbrewery—checking the specific gravity of the pumpkin beer brewing in the fermentation vessel, then washing all surfaces and rinsing thoroughly. The secret to beer, the real secret, she knew, is cleanliness. A stray bacterium or a single wild yeast getting into the brew could spoil it entirely.
Then she went around the pub, checking doors and lights and alarms. Satisfied all was in order, she pulled on her raincoat—of course it was raining again; it was going to mostly rain until it mostly snowed.
Walking the several blocks home, she considered her earlier conversation with Betsy. She liked the woman, and trusted her, but this afternoon had not been the time to mention that it was the Tarot that told Leona her enemy was female. Betsy was a good Christian and so probably not much of a believer in such things. If Leona wanted Betsy’s sympathetic help in this wicked gossip business, she had better not make a display of her psychic powers.
She went in her front door and waited to be greeted by her two cats. Snap, a ginger-and-white neutered tom with deep orange eyes, came at a trot and braced himself with a forepaw on her knee to be stroked. “Well, hello, Snapper,” she said. “Where’s your partner in crime?”
Snap didn’t know, he didn’t care, could he have another caress?
But Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Cat was nowhere to be seen. “Jo-Jo?” called Leona. After a few moments, two eyes came glowing to life in the darkest corner of the dining room, under the buffet.
“Say, what’s got you spooked, baby?” asked Leona.
In reply, the cat came stiffly out from under the old piece, crossed the dimly shining hardwood of the dining room floor, and walked sedately to Leona. Th
ere she sat, just out of reach, looking steadily up at her mistress.
Where Snap was jolly and friendly, a licker of chins and a lover of play, Jo-Jo had the poise and dignity of one of the great cats. She was a solid black, and her shape was that of the long, lean, heavy-muzzled leopard. Her method of communication, unlike the ebullient Snap’s, was subtle. But perhaps because she had to work harder at it, Leona could read her better than the tom. By the look in Jo-Jo’s eyes, something troubling had happened while Leona was gone.
Leona made a swift pass through the rooms, finding nothing amiss. There was no alarming aura in the house, no strange smells, no disturbance in the air, nothing broken or out of place. The back porch door had been repaired, and was intact. The upstairs, bedrooms and bathroom, was untouched. No window open, no one hidden in the closets.
Leona sat down on the old horsehair couch in her living room and traded stares with Jo-Jo. “Well, what is it? By the Goddess, I wish you could talk!”
Since she couldn’t, Leona sat back and let her psychic talent loose. She had been thinking like a non-Wiccan about the vandalizing of her back porch, a necessary stratagem when dealing with police and other citizens, a “we’re just like anyone else” persona she could assume at will—because it was mostly true. But right now it was time to put her witch’s hat on and consider things from a Wiccan point of view.
Someone had vandalized her porch and the police were treating it as a hate crime—an attack on her because she was Wiccan. No arrests had been made, and now her cat was all slantwise. She hadn’t been slantwise after the first attack, she’d been upstairs under the clawfoot bathtub, where she had remained for twenty-four hours.
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