Blackwork

by Monica Ferris

  “I’m three going on four.”

  “Going on four? That’s means you’re getting to be a big girl. Are you going to sleep in your own bed tonight?”

  “No! I sleep wiff Claire and Mommy every night in the big bed.” She gestured widely to show how big it was.

  Betsy nodded, satisfied. “I bet that’s fun. But I can’t stay and talk any more. I must go away now.” Betsy straightened and said to LuLu, “May I call on you again if I have more questions?”

  “Yes, of course. I wish you luck in your sleuthing.”

  OUTSIDE, she checked her watch. Nearly twelve noon. She wanted to be back at Crewel World in time for the Monday Bunch meeting at two. There was enough time to get to The Barleywine and have a quick lunch while she talked to Billie.

  Betsy drove over to the brew-pub and found a depressing paucity of customers—and no Billie. From behind the bar, Leona said, “She’s gone to Saint Paul to pick up kitchen supplies—there’s a special price but only if we send someone over right now. She’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  Betsy used her cell to call Shelly and found out Harvey was in Chanhassen, supervising the cleanup on the park he’d been designing. She had Leona pack up a ham on rye with Swiss, a handful of potato chips, and a long spear of pickle, and set out.

  Chanhassen was a pretty and growing town, famous for its dinner theater. The new park bordered a new town house development on the north side of town. Betsy pulled into a freshly tarred parking lot, prepared to eat her sandwich in her car before setting out on a search, but saw four men sitting at a picnic table under a shelter a few dozen yards away. One was a young man in a business suit and raincoat, two were workmen in gray coveralls and muddy boots, and one was wearing jeans, a blue shirt and tie, a tweed jacket, and less-muddy workboots. They were consulting a large sheet of paper that wanted to roll up at the edges.

  Betsy got out of her car and started up a freshly graveled walk toward them. As she got nearer, she caught fragments of their conversation, which included terms like barm and punch list.

  “Very good, Mr. Fogelman,” said the man in the business suit, and everyone stood. Harvey Fogelman—the one in the tweed jacket-—rolled up the big sheet of paper and nodded at the workmen, who turned and walked off. The businessman shook Harvey’s hand and came up the walk toward Betsy, giving her a curious glance as he passed by.

  The air was chilly, a weak sun unable to warm it. The shelter was a blue-shingled roof set on concrete pillars. Harvey watched the businessman—no, he must be a politician, thought Betsy, here to approve the completion of the park.

  She saw Harvey turn to go in the opposite direction, and hailed him. “Mr. Fogelman! Hold on just a minute!”

  He turned to look at her, his face puzzled. “May I help you?” he asked as she came under the shelter’s roof.

  “I sure hope so,” she said, a little breathless from hurrying. “I’m Betsy Devonshire, from Excelsior, and I own Crewel World.”

  “Oh?” he said. Then his face cleared. “Oh, yes, you’re the amateur detective, and a friend of Shelly’s.” Then the frown came back. “And you want to talk to me about Ryan.”

  “Yessir, I do. Do you have just a few minutes?”

  He considered this for several long seconds, then sighed. “If you’ll let me smoke while we talk, okay.” He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a pipe and a pouch of tobacco.

  Betsy didn’t mind the smell of pipe tobacco, and anyway there was a soft breeze flowing under the wall-less shelter. “All right,” she said.

  He shoved his pipe into the pouch and began some twiddling motion to fill it while she asked, “How long did you know Ryan Mitchell?”

  “More years than I’d like to admit.”

  “How did you meet?”

  He stuck the pipe in his mouth, found a lighter in a dungaree pocket, turned it sideways to light it, and sucked its flame into the bowl of his pipe. He took a few puffs to get it going, then said, “After I got out of the service, I fooled around doing groundskeeping and managing a garden center before I decided to get serious about making a career of garden design. So I was sixteen years older than Ryan when we met in technical school. He was taking engine repair and small business management, I was studying garden architecture and small business management. I’m not sure why we hit it off at the start, our ages and backgrounds were so different. But we did have the same dumb sense of humor, and the same taste in music—and women, too. Plus, we were about equally broke. But I had my GI bill to help with school, plus a job, and he only had a job, so I let him share my apartment for less than half the rent, if he’d do more than his share of cleaning up. And he did. He was very cheerful about it, too, even if he did put on a ‘Yeth, Mathter’ accent when I’d remind him of a chore.” He smiled and blew a long streamer of fragrant smoke.

  Betsy chuckled. She’d gotten out her notebook and now she made a little note. “Did you graduate the same year?”

  “No, I finished up a year ahead of him, got a job after only two months of looking. He had a job waiting for him. He’d already been working in the engine repair section of the car dealership part-time, and just went to full time. He was really, really good with his hands.”

  “Was he drinking back then?”

  Harvey’s face went sad. “I don’t think I realized at the time just how much he was drinking. We both used to party pretty heavy when we partied, but it was an occasional thing. Looking back, I think it was more because we couldn’t afford it than because he didn’t want to get drunk more often. Even back then, he was an ugly drunk, and that’s why I decided not to renew the lease on the apartment when it ran out. I didn’t have the heart to throw him out, so I told him the landlord didn’t want us there anymore, and I found a place with only one bedroom.” He puffed on his pipe for a while, but Betsy waited and at last he said, more softly, “He slept on my couch for about a month before he moved in with someone else.”

  “So why did you invite him to stay with you and Shelly after his wife threw him out?”

  Harvey’s drawing on his pipe made his hesitation barely noticeable. “Because he really needed a place to stay. He swore he’d quit drinking and he said it would only be a short stay, that he’d talk LuLu into taking him back.”

  “But when he started drinking again, you didn’t tell him to leave.”

  Harvey’s hesitation was longer this time. “I know.” He sighed. “I know,” he repeated. “I thought Shelly was going to throw us both out—she might’ve if . . . if what happened hadn’t happened. I don’t know what I would’ve done if she threw me out. God, what a mess! I feel so bad for her! She was so angry with him—mostly on LuLu’s behalf, but still. Then walking into that in her sewing room, that was really unfair. And now hearing it might be murder. I can’t believe it! Who could do such a thing?” He seemed to catch himself then, stopping short and swallowing whatever else he was going to say, puffing angrily on his pipe.

  Betsy said, “You said yourself Ryan was an ugly drunk. Maybe he hurt someone badly while he was drunk, or threatened to do violence to someone. It could even have been just words. You know, blackmail. He was a friend of yours—had he been boasting about hurting someone in some way?”

  Harvey checked his watch and got to his feet in one swift motion. “Not that I can recall. What does it matter? Whatever the threat, it’s not there anymore. It’s all over, done and over.” He knocked the dottle out of his pipe on the edge of the table, ground it into the cement floor with a heavy boot, and put the pipe back in its pocket. “I’ve got to get back to work. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

  He walked away, leaving Betsy to stare thoughtfully after him.

  Twelve

  I’M serious! I would have died right there at the party if they hadn’t found me in another minute!” Godwin alternated between fear and amusement as he told his story to the Monday Bunch.

  “You mean to tell us,” said Bershada in a doubtful voice, “that that foggy stuff you make
with dry ice and water is poisonous?” She and three others were sitting at the library table on Monday afternoon. Turnout for the regular meeting of stitchers was thin because there was a very noisy thunder-storm going on outside.

  “No-o-o,” drawled Godwin. “That is, not exactly. You can breathe it like air, but it doesn’t work like air. Your lungs can’t get any oxygen out of it. And it gives you a huge headache. I actually thought someone hit me.” He touched a place on the back of his head. “Right here.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” said Emily, surprising them. When they looked at her, she blushed and said, “You know, you sit in your car in the garage with the door down, and it can kill you.”

  “Honey, that’s carbon monoxide. Dry ice is carbon dioxide.”

  “That’s right,” said tall, blond Jill, who had not only come out in such frightful weather, but had brought little Erik along. He lay asleep in his carrier on the floor beside her feet. He had slept on the way over, too. Erik could sleep through loud noises so tranquilly his mother at one time thought he might be deaf.

  She continued, “Carbon monoxide replaces the oxygen in the blood, so the victim’s dark venous blood turns bright red, as he suffocates at a cellular level.”

  “Jill, honestly—” began Betsy, never a fan of gory details.

  “All right, but it’s not the same as carbon dioxide poisoning, which is basically suffocation. Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide. It’s heavier than air, and that’s why the vapors you make by putting it in water flow across the floor. It’s not dangerous unless you fill a whole room with it, which is hard to do because you’d need a practically air-tight room to do that.”

  “Or unless you put your face right down into it,” amended Godwin.

  “Or unless,” agreed Jill placidly. “Which I don’t imagine you’ll do again.”

  “Wedding plans all finished?” asked Alice, trying to change the subject. She had had enough of the dangers of frozen carbon dioxide. Mere rain couldn’t keep Alice away from the Monday Bunch’s regular meetings. Though elderly, she was almost impervious to weather. “I’m not made of sugar,” she was inclined to say. “I won’t melt in the rain.” She loved weddings, and attended many, but she was shy, always sat in the back, and left as soon as the ceremony was over.

  “We’re ready,” said Godwin, as if speaking of a coming battle. A growl of thunder punctuated his words. Godwin looked at Betsy and asked accusingly, “Have you got the rings?” As Best Woman, that was one of Betsy’s responsibilities.

  “Not on me!” protested Betsy, afraid he was going ask her to produce them. “But I’ve put them in the purse I’m going to carry.”

  “You’re not carrying a purse!” exclaimed Godwin.

  “Of course I am, my dress doesn’t have a pocket. It’s just a tiny thing, it hangs from my wrist by a thin silver chain. It’s all right, I can have one. You’re the one who has to hold the bride’s bouquet while she takes her vows.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right.” Godwin began to look dreamy and the women looked at one another and smiled.

  “What time do you want us at the church tomorrow?” asked Emily. “The service is at ten, right?”

  “Yes. Don’t come before nine-forty, please. There are only going to be about twenty of us gathered.”

  It had started out to be a half dozen, but quickly grew to a dozen, and now was up to twenty-two. Any more and the service would have to be moved from the tiny stone chapel that was Excelsior’s oldest church to the big church on the other side of the church hall.

  If Phil and Doris had had their way, it would have been four people gathered in Father Rettger’s study for three or four minutes followed by lunch at Antiquity Rose.

  Instead, under Godwin’s prodding, there was to be a complete marriage service down to the throwing of the bouquet outside on the steps. Godwin was inclined to weep with sentiment when he thought about it.

  Alice said, “I was hoping Phil and Doris would be here today. I have something for her, something she should have before the wedding.” She bent sideways and lifted her big old sewing bag onto the table. From it she pulled a white box about eighteen inches long by a foot wide and not quite three inches deep. It was tied with a pale blue silk ribbon.

  “Oh, Alice, can we see it?” cried Godwin, coming around the table to look at the box. “Please, please? What is it?”

  She turned her bluff old face to him, prepared to say no, so he shifted tactics. “Is it for the wedding? It is, isn’t it? Because you want her to have it now. Well, I’m the wedding coordinator, I’m making all the arrangements, so I just have to see it.” He sat down beside her and put a tentative hand on the box. “Please?”

  She studied him briefly, while he put on his most beguiling face.

  “Oh, you,” she said. She pulled at the bow and it came open. She lifted the lid to expose a layer of tissue paper, which she parted with large, gentle hands. Inside was a layer of lace. Two layers. No, three.

  Betsy came for a look. “What is it?” she asked. “Oh, Alice, it’s bobbin lace!” Years ago Alice had been a well-known maker of gorgeous bobbin lace. She’d had to give it up when her eyes got too old to see the tiny pattern of knots.

  “Yes, it’s from my collection. I put together ten lengths of it to make this.” She held it up. It was a mantilla or head-scarf, a gossamer thing of pale ecru, fifteen inches wide and almost fifty inches long. It was made in inch-and-a-half-wide stripes, with tiny hearts in the central band that ran the length of the thing.

  “Wow!” said Godwin, testing its near-nothing heft with both hands, turning and twisting and bending to look at it from all angles.

  “Ohhhhhh,” breathed Betsy, coming to touch the thing very gently with a forefinger. “Perfect, this will be the perfect something borrowed.”

  “More likely the something old,” said Godwin. “Could something for the bride be old and borrowed both?”

  “Only old,” said Alice. “It’s a gift.”

  “Alice, do you mean that?” asked Betsy.

  “I can’t believe you want to part with something that lovely,” said Jill.

  “But I do,” said Alice. “Doris has been a good friend to me, and what else am I to do with things like this? I have no family to leave my lace to. And I certainly can’t wear something like this.” She smiled. “I can just see it over that red hair of hers, though. Won’t it be lovely?”

  Godwin threw his arms around her. “You are the best, the very best!”

  Emily said, “But will it go with what she’s wearing? Goddy, you’ve been keeping her wedding dress a big secret, so will this look okay?”

  “It will look fabulous.” He could no longer forbear talking about it and said all in a rush, “She’s going to be wearing a cream wool suit, with tan shoes. Betsy and I are going to wear navy, and Phil will wear his good brown pinstripe—it’s in the same color stream as Doris’s cream colors. This ecru mantilla will set the whole thing off just beautifully.”

  Jill said, “Alice, I can’t believe you’re giving this away. It is simply breathtaking. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want it back?”

  “I agree it came out very nice, but the newest pieces have been sitting in my cedar chest for at least a dozen years. I have more pieces than these, so it’s not as if I’m giving it all away. It was fun choosing the lace that could make something nice for my friend. Bobbin lace looks fragile, but this probably will outlast everyone in the room—even little Erik down there, so sound asleep, the little sweetheart. It’s nice to have my lace out of storage, to know it will have its day in the sun.” Alice’s voice was soft, the expression on her weathered face kind and happy.

  “Thank you for saying that!” said Godwin. “Now the sun just has to shine!”

  “I think it’s wonderful of you to do this,” said Betsy. “I’m sure Doris will be pleased to have it. Who gets to take it to her, me or Goddy?”

  “Why, I do, of course,” said Alice, folding it very carefully back into the tissu
e paper and laying it gently back in the box. “I’ll tell her that her marriage coordinator approves of her wearing it, all right?”

  She suited action to words, rising to put on an ancient pair of rubbers, a voluminous raincoat, and taking up a big old bumbershoot before heading out into the storm.

  Jill said, “A grand old lady, isn’t she?”

  Emily said, “Goddy, what else went on at that party you went to?”

  The women went back to their stitching while Godwin beguiled them with stories of the great food and drink, the wonderful recitations. He made them shiver with his, “The candle’s out this night and all.”

  “The candle’s out,” repeated Jill, storing the image away in her sometimes-depressive Scandinavian mind. Betsy was reminded that in medieval symbology, a snuffed candle represented the newly deceased. She frowned over that thought— was it significant?—but then Godwin went merrily into a description of Miss Bailey’s request for a bribe for the sexton so she could have a proper burial.

  Betsy surprised Godwin by knowing the sad reason for the unfortunate ghost’s need. “Suicides couldn’t be buried in the sacred ground of a cemetery, as they were considered damned souls,” she said. “I remember looking it up after the Kingston Trio sang it in a concert I went to.” She sang in a falsetto voice, “‘Bless you, wicked Captain Smith, remember poor Miss Bailey!’”

  The door made its two-note announcement of a customer coming in, and Betsy went to serve her—it was Shelly, who must have come directly from the classroom. “I need some new needles, Betsy,” she said. “Most of my old ones have rust spots on them.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad! How did it happen? Is that basement sewing room damp?”

  “Not at all, I can’t understand what happened. Here, look at this.” She opened her purse and brought out a little gray plastic needle safe. She unsnapped the catch to expose a white magnetic surface on which were captured six needles. Their silvery smoothness was marred by tiny flecks of rust.