Blackwork

by Monica Ferris

“They look as if they were left out in the rain,” remarked Betsy.

  Godwin and Emily came over for a look and agreed the needles must have gotten wet somehow. Shelly denied again her basement room was damp. She insisted to Emily that she would have noticed if there had been a flood. No, the water heater and washing machine in the other part of the basement hadn’t suffered a broken pipe. And no, it wasn’t dew sneaking in a window—the window in the room was filled with glass blocks and did not open. Nor was it improperly installed, so there were no leaks. “That room is dry as the Sahara in August,” declared Shelly.

  Godwin and Emily declared themselves baffled and went back to their seats.

  “Are all your needles rusted like this?” asked Betsy.

  “No, only the ones not put away in needle cases. These, for instance, and two left tucked into the corner of works in progress. Those last two left rust marks on the fabric. So I’ll need a bottle of Whink, too.” Whink was a product that made rust stains disappear as if by magic.

  “Not—” Betsy cut herself short with a glance at the Monday Bunch.

  “No, that piece was sitting out on my desk, but there wasn’t a needle stuck in it, so it’s fine.” Shelly smiled. “It’s nearly done. I’ll bring it in to be finished in a few days.”

  “Good.”

  Seeing they weren’t going to get any good clues about Shelly’s designer piece, the Monday Bunch adjourned their meeting and departed.

  Besides the Whink, Shelly bought nearly two dozen needles in various sizes. Not that many were marred by rust, but the needles came in packs of four or six or eight, and besides, once started, it’s hard for a needleworker to stop buying needles. Shelly bought a packet of size 17F Bodkins, two sizes of Chenille, size one and size five Crewel Sharps, and four sizes of Tapestry, from eighteens to twenty-eights.

  “The eyes are nearly worn through on my sharps anyhow,” she said. “I just don’t understand how the others got rusty in the first place. That room has always been almost too dry for comfort. I think it’s all the lights in there.”

  “Can’t you give us a hint about the pattern you’re designing?” asked Godwin.

  “No, not one word. Except I think you’ll like it.”

  She would have left then, but Betsy said, “Shelly, may I ask you something?”

  “Sure, anything at all.”

  “Harvey and Ryan were good friends, but I’m sure Ryan’s drinking, especially after he tried so hard to quit, was a source of frustration to Harvey.”

  “If you’re going to ask me why I didn’t throw them both out, all I can say is that I don’t know.” She stopped short, cast her eyes toward the ceiling, and sighed. “No, that’s not true. I am hopelessly, madly, crazy in love with Harvey. I think he’s been trying to ask me to marry him for the past few weeks, but something’s stopping him. I had the insane notion that somehow Ryan was preventing him from proposing, but now Ryan’s gone, and it still hasn’t happened.”

  “Did Ryan ever say anything to make you think that?”

  She thought briefly. “No. And since Harvey’s still holding off—he’s looking for something or waiting for someone, I’m sure of it. I thought it had to do with Ryan, but I guess it wasn’t Ryan after all.”

  Thirteen

  AS Godwin predicted, the wedding day dawned clear and warm. “Indian summer at last,” noted Alice as Betsy and Godwin waited at the top of the steps leading to the old stone chapel on Second Street to greet the guests.

  “Dearly Beloved,” began Father John a few minutes later in his gentle voice, making the old words sound as fresh as the morning, “we have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony.”

  The congregation sighed, because they were unsophisticated enough to appreciate the familiar old words. They had come not to smirk at the old folks’ faltering pretense of love, but to witness a marriage that was, in their considered opinion, beautifully right.

  Father John asked, “Doris, will you have this man to be your husband, to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love and comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”

  “I will,” said Doris.

  Phil was pleased to have Doris under the same conditions.

  John asked the gathering if they, as witnesses to these promises, would do all in their power to uphold these two persons in their marriage. They said in strong unison, smiling all the while, “We will!”

  The first reading surprised no one: First Corinthians (“But the greatest of these is love.”) The second, though, was startling:

  “A reading from Psalm Eighteen,” Betsy announced, “verses four through fifteen, forty-eight and forty-nine.”

  The breakers of death rolled over me, and the torrents of oblivion made me afraid. The cords of hell entangled me, and the snares of death were set for me. I called upon the Lord in my distress, and cried out to my God for help. He heard my voice from his heavenly dwelling, my cry of anguish came to his ears.

  By now the members of the congregation were staring at one another in puzzlement, but Phil reached for Doris’s hands and clasped them firmly. They were remembering a dark winter night of mortal danger, when a man armed with a revolver set out to murder them. Betsy had been there, and Lars; they were remembering, too. Godwin and Jill had heard the story; they were listening solemnly. Father John had been told why this reading was chosen, and his expression was one of Christian forbearance. Members of the Monday Bunch gradually realized the context of the reading and they began to smile as Betsy continued to read.

  The earth reeled and rocked, the roots of the mountains shook, they reeled because of his anger.

  And because Doris had the presence of mind to unleash the power of Lars’s Stanley Steamer automobile.

  Smoke rose from his nostrils and a consuming fire out of his mouth; hot burning coals blazed forth from him. He parted the heavens and came down with a storm cloud under his feet. He mounted on cherubim and flew, he swooped on the wings of the wind. He wrapped darkness about him; he made dark waters and thick clouds his pavilion. From the brightness of his presence, through the clouds, burst hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord thundered out of heaven, the Most High uttered his voice. He loosed his arrows and scattered them; he hurled thunderbolts and routed them.

  Well, perhaps not as awesome as all that, but startling and scary all the same to an unprepared villain.

  You rescued me from the fury of my enemies; you exalted me above those who rose against me; you saved me from my deadly foe. Therefore will I extol you among the nations, O Lord, and sing praises to your Name.

  Betsy smiled and closed the book. “The Word of the Lord,” she said, the ritual ending of a reading.

  Then Phil kept hold of Doris’s right hand, and invoking the Name of God, he took the rest of her, too “From this day forward, for better for worse, for richer and poorer”—by now his old man’s voice was choking, and Doris had tears in her eyes, but they soldiered on—“in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”

  Then Doris took Phil as well.

  Betsy found the rings in her tiny purse, and gave them to John to bless. Doris in her turn said, “. . . and with all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you . . .” as she put onto Phil’s finger the mate to the one now gleaming on her own fourth finger.

  Then John blessed the couple: “By the power of the Holy Spirit, pour out the abundance of your blessing upon this man and this woman. Defend them from every enemy. Lead them into all peace. Let their love for one another be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows . . .”

  The tiny electric organ in the chapel had rarely rung the chords so loudly and
sincerely as it provided a lift to the feet of the newlyweds as they left.

  Godwin caught the bouquet. He was as embarrassed as he was thrilled, and immediately handed it to Betsy. Betsy gave it to Alice, who took it home and kept it for a long time.

  Fourteen

  OVER a light supper that evening, Betsy remembered how happy Phil and Doris looked at the service earlier. What a lovely thing to be in love, she thought. Maybe it’s not too late for me, either.

  She washed her dishes and then sat down in her comfortable upholstered chair with its angled light shining over her left shoulder and got out her blackwork piece. As sometimes happened, her brain fought against the new kind of pattern, then suddenly surrendered. In another few minutes she was enjoying following the kinks and jogs of the twining pattern. As that happened, the rhythm and repetitions soothed her troubled mind and allowed her sleuthing instincts to kick in.

  She had a hunch that the solution to this case was staring her in the face, if only she could discern it. She was nearly halfway done with the second blackwork pattern before a glimmer came to her. Two glimmers. She put down her stitching and went first to her kitchen to look for and find the box of white emergency candles she kept there. She set one into a holder and lit it, then carried it with her to her computer, where she logged on to the Internet.

  She was surprised by the number of vital record sites for Hennepin County, and disappointed that most of them wanted her to subscribe for a modest fee. Finally, she found a free one linked to the public library and quickly discovered a record of marriage between Harvey Raymond Fogelman and Melissa Jean Brooks. The marriage was recorded twenty-nine years ago—but there was no record of a divorce.

  Of course they might have moved away and divorced . . . No, wait, Shelly had remarked one day that Harvey was born in Hennepin County and was determined to die here, never having lived anywhere else. She had said he jested that the reason he went into landscape architecture was because, since he planned on living here all his life, he might as well make it look nice.

  So was it possible that Harvey was still married to Melissa?

  Betsy sat back in her chair. What had she said to Harvey that spooked him the other day? Something about Ryan threatening violence? Yes, and she had also asked him if it was possible that Ryan was blackmailing someone. Harvey had immediately jumped to his feet and said that whatever it was, it was over and done with, and he had to get back to work.

  Had Ryan known or found out that Harvey was still married? If so, when he needed a place to stay and came to ask Harvey to get Shelly to let him move in, had he used that piece of information as leverage? After all, he planned to stay just temporarily. The threat might have been made lightly; perhaps Harvey saw no real harm in it, until Ryan started drinking again. Then his presence would have become much more troublesome. Ryan was, Shelly had reported, a snoop and a gossip. When drunk, and loaded with dangerous information, he was a clear and present danger to Harvey’s relationship with Shelly.

  So, if her instincts were correct, why didn’t Harvey just tell Shelly that he was still married? And why didn’t he file for divorce from Melissa Jean?

  Betsy set that puzzle aside to do a little work on the second glimmer.

  The candle burned at a rate of an inch an hour.

  On her lunch break the next day, Betsy drove into Minneapolis and found Metro Ice in its factory-like building off Lyndale Avenue, as she had discovered on the Internet last night. Because they were wholesalers, they would not sell her less than one whole bag of dry ice pellets, which turned out to weigh about ten pounds.

  “Leave your window cracked on your drive home,” advised the man who sold it to her. “It evaporates faster in pellet form.” He put it into another plastic bag, but then punched holes in the plastic with a ballpoint pen. “It swells up and bursts if it isn’t vented,” he explained.

  The pellets were about the size and shape of goose droppings, an unpleasant thought—but that wasn’t why Betsy carried the bag well away from her out to the parking lot. It was smoking with cold, and that made her nervous. She put the bag onto the front seat beside her in her car, and drove back to Excelsior with her front windows open a generous two inches. Because the air was filled with a fine drizzle, she arrived back in Excelsior with damp hair.

  When she got back to the shop, she found that Leona and Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy had responded to her call and were waiting for her. Godwin was all agog to know what this was about.

  “I’m going to show you how I think Ryan McMurphy was murdered,” she said, leading them into the rear half of the shop, where the many painted needlepoint canvases lived, along with the wools and silks and flosses necessary to complete them.

  “Let this bucket be Shelly’s sewing room,” said Betsy. It was a tall white plastic bucket that had once held forty pounds of kitty litter.

  “Kind of a small workspace,” noted Leona.

  “Nice high ceilings, however,” said Godwin.

  Mike snorted softly.

  Betsy took a small candle set into a frosted glass globe, open at the top, and put it into the bucket. She said, “Shelly likes a really well-lit work space, so when the lights are on, it’s blinding bright in there. Ryan was afraid of the dark, but couldn’t sleep in the bright light. So he would put a candle in a big pottery bowl—the bowl was because he was also afraid of fire—and light it. He’d leave it lit and it would be burned out by morning.” She struck a match and lit the candle.

  Then, using a plastic spoon, she scooped up a few pellets of dry ice from the plastic bag, whose top she had cut open. Two tumbled off the spoon, and without thinking she grabbed for them, caught one, and yelled in pain. She shook it out of her hand onto the floor.

  “It burned me!” she exclaimed, looking at the dark red shape forming on the palm of her left hand.

  Mike took her hand. “That’s a bad burn,” he said frowning at it. “What’d you grab it for?”

  “It was just instinct,” she said, squeezing her left wrist hard. “But how do I make it stop hurting? If it was a regular burn, I’d put ice on it.”

  Leona said, “Let me see.” She took Betsy’s hand from Mike and held it gently. She closed her eyes and suddenly Betsy felt the pain go away.

  “What—How did you do that?” Betsy asked.

  “It’s a talent I got from my grandmother. It’s called ‘drawing fire.’ I wasn’t sure it would work on that, since it’s not hot, but I guess it does.”

  Mike made a grimace of disbelief, but Godwin was awe-struck. “That is the most fantastic thing I have ever seen! It’s, it’s like a miracle!” He grinned. “Or is it magic?”

  “No, it’s not magic, and it’s not a miracle, either. It’s just a natural talent some people have,” said Leona, her tone patient. “Like water witching, which my father could do. Now, my dear,” she continued to Betsy, “go on with this interesting experiment.”

  Working more carefully, Betsy scattered four two-inch-long pellets of dry ice into the bucket.

  “Now what?” asked Mike.

  “Now we wait.”

  “Aren’t you going to pour in a little water?” asked Godwin. “That’s how you get the vapor.”

  “No, the water just makes the vapor visible. It’s there.”

  It took about five minutes. The pellets dwindled just a little but the air around them didn’t look any different.

  “Watch,” said Betsy at last, noticing the candle starting to fade, and the four heads came together over the top of the bucket.

  Very quietly, and with no signs of a struggle, the candle’s flame grew smaller and weaker. It finally went out, sending a thin streamer of smoke upward.

  “So?” said Mike.

  “It was the carbon dioxide that smothered the flame,” said Betsy. “Dry ice goes directly from solid to gas, no liquid in between. And it replaces the air in the room, killing anything that demands oxygen, such as a candle. Or a human being. That’s why there was half a candle left beside Ry
an’s body.”

  “I nearly died when I got too close to the dry ice fog at Rafael’s party,” said Godwin.

  “But you didn’t die—because you were found and moved into fresh air in time,” said Betsy. She and Godwin explained to Mike the incident at the party. She concluded, “There was no one to do that for Ryan.”

  “But he would have seen the fog!” objected Mike. “I’ve been around dry ice fog lots of times. Even without water, there’s a kind of fog.”

  Betsy pointed to the bucket. “You just saw it at work here. When the air is dry, there is little or no fog. And remember, Ryan was in no condition to notice a faint fog in the air if there was one,” she said.

  “Light that candle again,” ordered Mike. “I want to see if that experiment works twice in a row.”

  But they couldn’t light the candle again. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, and it filled the bottom quarter of the bucket. Every time Betsy lowered a lit match beyond a certain point, it went out. She could lift the candle out and light it, but lowering it into the bucket was like lowering it into water: it went out instantly.

  “Okay, how do you get rid of it?” asked Mike. “The gas, I mean.”

  “It dissipates all by itself. That’s why Shelly could walk in the next day with no harm. Do you want to stay and wait to see how long it takes? In the sewing room it had the rest of the night and half the next day.”

  “I don’t want to stand here for the rest of the day,” said Mike. He upended the bucket, “pouring out” the carbon dioxide. It took several tries and some forceful swirling of the bucket before the bottom was clear enough of the gas to support a candle flame. “How much dry ice does it take to kill a person anyhow?” he wondered.

  “That’s not an experiment I’m willing to try,” said Betsy. “But it displaces the air when it first evaporates. They warned me at Metro Ice to use this only in a ventilated room.”

  “Okay, but how did it get in there? The door was locked, remember? Shelly had to unlock it to get to McMurphy.”