Blackwork

by Monica Ferris

  “Yes, I’ve heard that a lot of his family members were firefighters.”

  “It does run in families. His great-grandfather was also a fireman in Minneapolis, during World War Two.”

  Betsy said, “So he must’ve been really upset when he had to stop being a fireman because of his arm.”

  “He hated Ryan for a long time. I think if he could have called him out, gotten into a fistfight with him, it would have done both of them a world of good—it ate at Ryan, too, you know.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it from that angle. Yet Ryan wouldn’t quit drinking.”

  “Couldn’t quit. Not for good anyway. I don’t think anyone fully understands the dynamics of alcoholism. The triggers that set off binges in people are as individual as they are, probably.”

  “What started him in again that last Thursday he was in here?”

  “Goddess knows. I certainly don’t. Did anyone criticize his work on the fire engine?”

  “On the contrary, everyone was very pleased and said so. Especially Billie.”

  “Ah, yes, Billie and Ryan, there’s an interesting story.”

  “Yes, she told me. Do you know where she was on Sunday?”

  “If you mean, was I with her the whole time, no.”

  “Did you see her at all?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Leona, “she came in to see if the repairman had come to fix the refrigerator in the kitchen—he had, and about time!—and she ate lunch here.”

  “How about later?”

  “She had the mayor to supper here, and then had coffee with two members of our Chamber of Commerce. I really don’t think she should have taken on the job of running our Halloween event; it’s been driving her crazy. Between that, running her house, and working here, she doesn’t have time for a nervous breakdown. Like the old joke goes, as soon as the rush is over, she’ll have one. She’s worked for it, she’s earned it, and no one is going to keep her from it.”

  Betsy chuckled. Old folks like old jokes best. She said, “This salad is great.”

  “Just like you remember it, right? Down to the hard-boiled egg wedges.”

  “You bet.” Betsy was feeling older by the second.

  “So how is the parade planning coming along?”

  “My part in it? Just fine. I figure so long as I don’t put the three bands right behind one another, it’ll work out great. How come Billie didn’t persuade you to take a role?”

  “Because All Hallows is a religious holiday for me.”

  “You really are serious about your religion, aren’t you?”

  “Aren’t you about yours?”

  “Yes, I suppose I am. And I’m a little ashamed to say you probably know a whole lot more about Christianity than I do about Wicca.”

  “I could loan you a nice, thick book.”

  “Which would sit unread on my coffee table until I felt safe returning it—I’m a busy person, too, Leona.”

  Leona laughed.

  “May I ask a possibly insulting question about Wicca?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Surely you don’t really believe in things like the Wendigo, or tree sprites. So how can you think there are gods of the storm and sea?”

  “Have you ever read Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories?” asked Leona.

  “Of course,” said Betsy, puzzled by this sudden shift of topic.

  “Remember ‘The Elephant’s Child’?”

  Betsy smiled. “Yes, about how the elephant got his long trunk.”

  “How did that happen?”

  Still smiling, Betsy replied, “The insatiably curious baby elephant poked his little nose into the great gray-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees; and a crocodile grabbed hold and stretched it out.”

  “Do you believe that story? Do you think it’s really how the elephant got his trunk?”

  “No, of course not!”

  “Does that mean there are no such things as elephants?”

  “Oh,” said Betsy.

  The pumpkin pie was delicious.

  Seventeen

  THE rest of the day didn’t help narrow down the list of suspects much. On the phone, LuLu McMurphy confessed that both her daughters went to a playdate at a neighbor’s house for an hour after supper at five, so she had no alibi for the early evening of the day Ryan was murdered.

  “How well do you know Shelly Donohue?” Betsy asked as talk drifted to other subjects.

  “Oh, gosh, I’ve known Shelly since grade school,” LuLu replied, “and Harv for about three years. They seem to be good for each other. At first I didn’t think they’d be a match, since she comes from a white-collar family and I was sure he was a blue-collar type. All that outdoor stuff, you know. I thought it was mostly lawn mowing and tree trimming. It was Ryan who made me understand there was a creative mind shining brightly among all the foliage—those two have been friends for years. He really is brilliant, you know. Harv, I mean. He can look at a dreary piece of land and make a plan for a beautiful garden.”

  “How did he come to let Ryan stay with them? Didn’t Shelly throw a fit? I know I would’ve.”

  “She did. Harv was for letting him use the spare bedroom, but Shelly said it had too much of her stuff in it, and Ryan was a snoop as well as a gossip. Harv was supposed to help her turn it into a proper guest room, but that’s one of those projects that just wasn’t getting done, you know?”

  Betsy, thinking of the broken door in the Crewel World counter, nodded.

  “Since it was only supposed to be for a couple of days, Harv borrowed a futon from someone he works with and set it up on the floor of the sewing room. But it went on and on. Shelly was already at the end of her rope after nine days when Ryan called to say he’d been arrested for drunk driving and causing an accident. She told Harv in no uncertain terms that that was it, Ryan was out. But he talked her around somehow. Harv came and begged me to take Ryan back. I said my terms were he enters a resident treatment center and joins AA afterward. But Ryan was still convinced he could beat this on his own.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that Harv or Shelly could be responsible for Ryan’s death?”

  She smiled. “Over him sleeping in Shelly’s sewing room? No. Harv is not the type to kill anyone, unless maybe he caught him harming Shelly. He really, really loves her—I’m surprised they aren’t married. Of course, he had a disastrous first marriage; Ryan said something about it to me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he tried to tease Harv about it and Harv told him if he brought her up again he’d murder him.” She made a choking sound and hastened to add, “No, no, that’s a joke! It was just a joke! Ryan liked to say things to get a rise out of people, we all knew that. Especially when he’d been drinking.”

  “How angry was Shelly about Ryan staying in her house?”

  “I don’t know. But if I were Shelly, the person I’d kill would be Harv.”

  Betsy sighed, agreeing with that sentiment. “Tell me more about Ryan.”

  “He always was a troubled sort of person, but deep down he was full of feelings. I felt enormous compassion for him, and thought I was the only person who really understood him. Which turned out not to be true, of course. I don’t know if his problems were so bad because his family protected him from the consequences of his behavior too much when he was young, or because he started drinking long before anyone knew it was a problem with him. I do know he quit drinking the second I threw him out, but he’s quit before and he only stayed sober eleven days this time. He told me that night he tried to come home—drunk again—that someone ambushed him with alcohol, though I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  “Did he say who did it?”

  “He said it was Leona Cunningham.”

  BETSY retrieved Billie’s cell phone number from her list of committee members, and dialed it.

  “Hello?” said Billie’s harassed-sounding voice a few rings later.

  “Billie, it’s me, Betsy. I kno
w you’re frantically busy, but I really need to talk to you, for just a few minutes. It’s about the Ryan murder, and Leona.”

  Billie asked, “Are you letting the talk going around about her get to you after all?”

  “No, of course not! But I’m looking at everyone who had a run-in with Ryan, and that includes Leona.” Betsy was sitting in her car in the parking lot behind the small, nondescript brick building that was city hall.

  “Doesn’t she have an alibi?”

  “For most of the time in question, yes. But not all. Do you know what caused Ryan to decide Leona was trying to curse him?”

  “Do you have a few minutes?” Billie asked.

  Betsy settled back to listen. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Well, about two years ago, Ryan was going through a hard time—again. It was entirely his own fault. He was quarreling with everyone, and people were getting sick of his attitude. Then that incident with the money manager—What was his name? Wainwright, that’s it, Adam Wainwright—happened. You know, the fish fell out of the sky on him and he wrecked his car and his vision. I don’t know who told Ryan the guy had stolen money from Leona and so maybe she witched the accident on him. He always was very superstitious; it was his way of blaming his bad luck on something besides himself. He absolutely believed that Leona caused Adam’s accident with her black magic. He might even have hinted to her that he thought so. I don’t know. Or somehow in passing she may have said something to him; you know, on the order of ‘Straighten up and fly right.’ Whatever, he got the notion that she had her eye on him, and it just grew from there. He’d see her on the street and something bad would happen and he’d remember that she looked at him funny.

  “When Leona and I went into business together, we remodeled the Waterfront Café into The Barleywine, and he was one of our first regulars—he liked me well enough, so he’d come in when I was tending bar. Barleywine’s beer is higher in alcohol than regular beer—most microbrewery beer is. Ryan only drank beer—he had a notion that as long as he only drank beer, he wasn’t an alcoholic. But he was a very ugly drunk and we finally had to ban him from the place. It’s my fault he came in that last time, but he promised he wouldn’t drink anything but Coke. I tried to keep an eye on him, and Roger swears he didn’t order a beer from the bar.” Roger, Betsy remembered, was Billie’s son.

  “He didn’t. Joey Mitchell bought it for him.”

  “That’s right, I’d forgotten that.”

  “To the best of your knowledge, did Leona ever tell Ryan she was going to put a hex on him? Maybe as a joke?”

  “No, never. She takes her religion very seriously, and there are some pretty strict rules about that sort of thing.”

  “Is it possible that Leona slipped Ryan a beer at that meeting? Maybe to celebrate the fire truck’s restoration?”

  Billie thought for a moment. Betsy could hear her breathing into the phone. “No. Because remember? She was back in the brewery. When she came out to work behind the bar, he was already drunk.”

  “Yes, that’s right. All right. Thanks, Billie.”

  WHY would Ryan think you were the one who sabotaged his sobriety?”

  Betsy was back at The Barleywine, which now had no customers at all.

  “I don’t know,” said Leona. “I didn’t serve him anything.”

  “Not even a Coke?”

  “Not even a Coke. I was checking the vessels in the brewery and making sure I had enough malt for when I started the next batch of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark Ale. Roger was working. He tended Ryan’s booth, brought him his Cokes. I didn’t even realize Ryan was here until he came up to me singing when I was tending bar, and he was drunk by then.”

  Betsy said, “And Billie only brought him an orange and some sandwiches. Was there alcohol—brandy, for example—in the sandwich fillings? Even a small taste of alcohol can set off a binge in an alcoholic.”

  “Yes, I know. So does almost everyone, including the people who work here. But no, the sandwich filling was chicken salad I made myself. There was rosemary in it, salt and pepper, mayonnaise, celery. Not even any onion.”

  “Hmmmmmm.”

  “Maybe the orange had fermented,” said Leona, but that was a jest.

  “Very funny,” said Betsy. “I want you to talk to me about Billie.”

  “What can I tell you about her?”

  “For example, how angry was she at Ryan for trying to spoil her daughter Cara’s chances of getting an appointment to the Naval Academy?”

  “I thought she told you about that.”

  “She did. She says her daughter has finally settled on getting a degree as a veterinary assistant, though that seems kind of a step down from being a naval officer.”

  “Poor Cara. I don’t think she would have made it through Annapolis anyway. Though who knows? She wanted it badly enough. And Billie wanted it for her even more—Cara is Billie’s favorite child, though to my mind, Roger is the better bet. Now that Cara’s going to be tending sick animals, suddenly that’s the best, most prestigious work a young woman can do. Billie not only pays her tuition, she buys her anything she needs for her labs, helps her with her homework, brags about her all the time. She’d take Cara’s tests for her, if she could. Fortunately, Cara’s not much more spoiled than any kid would be from all the attention. Even better, Roger and Eddie aren’t jealous. Maybe it’s because they’re her brothers, and there’s not another daughter to be hurt by the favoritism.”

  “And what does Cara think of becoming a veterinary assistant?”

  “Well, despite Billie’s best efforts, she knows it’s not quite the same as a commission as a U.S. Navy ensign.”

  “How angry was Cara at Ryan for shooting down her chances?”

  The smile on Leona’s face melted and she sighed. “Damn angry. In fact, if her alibi wasn’t so solid, I’d say you should look hard at her. It’s been two years and more, and she still spits firecrackers when someone mentions him to her.”

  A patron came in about then looking for an early supper, so Betsy thanked Leona and left. She drove back to her shop thoughtfully. Was there a clue lurking somewhere in all she’d learned today?

  She parked in the tiny lot behind her shop and came in the back way. As she walked through the little back room into the cross-stitch area, she heard two men’s voices. She paused to listen.

  One was Godwin, obviously; his light tenor with its manner of emphasizing words was unmistakable. The other man’s voice was deeper, and the more she listened, the more she wondered if he was foreign born. There was just the faintest hint of a brogue in the sharpness of his consonants.

  So she shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was when she came out from between the twin set of box shelves to see it was her new tenant, Connor Sullivan, deep in conference with Godwin over a knitting pattern. After all, his name could hardly have been more Irish.

  She stood awhile, looking and listening. The talk was esoteric; the man knew knitting. Betsy suddenly wondered if the beautiful Aran sweater she’d seen him wearing the other day wasn’t knit by him. And where she’d thought him rather ordinary looking, now she thought there was something attractive about him. Then she realized it was because he was talking about a subject that really interested him. His hooded eyes were wider open and gleaming, and he was smiling as he gestured at a heap of balls of fingerling wool in a dozen colors, ranging from palest blue to rich maroon.

  Godwin had taken up a pair of slender knitting needles and cast on a row of dark green. Now he was working with two colors in a knit two, purl two pattern, switching colors with every switch from knit to purl.

  “Before your purl stitch,” he was saying, “drop the old color and bring the working color under the old color and to the front of the ribbing between the needles, and purl two.” His hands moved as he did the two purls. “This is on the right side of the work.”

  “Hello, Goddy,” said Betsy. “What are you teaching Mr. Sullivan to do?”

  “Corduroy stitch. He wan
ts to knit a Fair Isle sweater.”

  Fair Isles, done in the traditional way, have extra-stiff collars and cuffs knit in a heavy ribbing called corduroy.

  Fair Isles are colorful, with many rows of small, geometric patterns, knit with fine wool on small-gauge circular needles.

  “Have you knit with more than one color before, Mr. Sullivan?” asked Betsy, not wanting him to bite off more than he could chew.

  “Yes,” said Connor, “but not as many as this. On the other hand, I can do an argyle without looking at a pattern, and I’m looking for something more challenging.”

  “Well, congratulations, you’ve found it.”

  “Have you knit a Fair Isle, Ms. Devonshire?”

  “No,” admitted Betsy. “I’ve looked at them and they’re gorgeous, but they’re complicated and they take a lot of time. Besides, that business of taking a pair of scissors to cut the openings for the sleeves . . . After all that work, to cut in the wrong place . . .” She gave a dramatic shudder. “Too scary!”

  He laughed. “A lady as brave as you afraid of a little scissoring? I don’t believe it!”

  “What makes you think I’m brave?”

  “Godwin here has been telling me of your exploits as a detective.”

  “Goddy!” scolded Betsy.

  But the apologetic shrug Godwin offered was entirely synthetic.

  “So long as you’re here,” said Connor, “may I turn over the signed lease on the smaller of the two apartments you have for rent?” His tone had gone from bantering to serious in the taking of a breath.

  “Yes, of course,” said Betsy, matching his tone. “And thank you for being so prompt. Still plan to move in on the first?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Good.” They discussed the terms briefly, then Connor paid for the wool, a book of patterns, and size three circular knitting needles, and left.

  Godwin leaned toward Betsy and leered. “He likes you.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, he does not!”