Darned if You Do

by Monica Ferris

  She nodded. “Yes, I did.”

  Betsy asked, “When? I mean, what time of day?”

  “Midmorning, I think. Before lunch, anyway. I was bringing some more books into the living room and dropped them on the couch with the others, and one of the volumes bumped up against the gun. Gave me a kind of start, frankly; I hadn’t realized it was there.”

  “What make of gun was it?” asked Phil. “Something decent?”

  “It started out decent, a Marlin. Bolt action. Not sure of the age or the model—that’s why I wanted a closer look.”

  Emily said, “The thing that needs to get thrown away is that couch. It smells.” She wrinkled her nose, remembering.

  “Did you go looking for it?” Jill asked Connor. “The rifle, I mean.”

  “Just quickly, so not thoroughly; there are still places in that house where you could tuck a dead horse, much less a rifle.” He shrugged. “In any case, I didn’t find it. And didn’t worry about it, either.” He looked at Betsy. “But it’s been found, thanks to our own private amateur sleuth.”

  “Where did it turn up?” asked Jill.

  “On the grave of a man named Teesdale,” said Betsy.

  “Bum, bum, bum!” sang Godwin in dramatic voice.

  Betsy continued, “It’s the second thing we know of that’s gone missing from the house. I have to wonder how secure that place is when no one’s inside.”

  “The back door has a dead bolt,” Cherie pointed out. “And the front door has that big padlock.”

  “The windows are painted shut, too,” said Connor. “I tried to open a couple of them that afternoon. It was a warm day, as I remember.”

  Phil said, “I remember the weather that day, too. I was wearing an old sweater over a shirt over an undershirt, and I was down to the undershirt before we finished.”

  “Did you see the rifle?” asked Betsy.

  “Nope. Wasn’t looking for it, and anyway, I was working in the kitchen.”

  Betsy checked the list. “Alice, you were there that day, too.”

  “Yes, I was,” said Alice in her deep voice. “I came right after lunch. But I didn’t see any rifle. Nor did I see anyone walking out either door of the house holding it under his arm. Or her arm,” she added.

  Jill turned to Betsy. “Perhaps you should look at who was there the day the cinnabar box went missing, and also who was there the day the rifle went away.”

  “Hmm,” said Betsy. “I am going to contact the other people on the list who were in the house the day Connor couldn’t find the rifle and the day the cinnabar box disappeared.”

  * * *

  “IT’S getting late,” said Georgine to her sister. She was already in her nightgown.

  “I know, but this is going to be interesting,” said Gracie.

  “We’re not earning any money working on that handkerchief,” said Georgine.

  “Money isn’t everything,” said Grace.

  “Ooooh, what you said!” Georgine said, pretending to be shocked. “All right, suit yourself, I’m turning in.”

  Grace was intrigued by the problem Betsy had offered her. She had gathered the tools she needed to work out the pattern: a fine linen hanky, a spool of tatting thread, a size ten crochet hook, and a notepad and pen.

  She spread the handkerchief out on the middle of the table beside her notepad and turned on the lamp she had moved there so that the light shone directly on her work area.

  She’d found three linen handkerchiefs at Leipold’s already edged with narrow crochet lace and carefully cut the lace off the largest one, making it the same size as the van Hollen handkerchief.

  She looked carefully at the lace edging, then, beginning at the upper right corner of her blank handkerchief, she ran her thread through and crocheted a chain of four. Then she went back to the same place and single crocheted, making a loop on the corner. She did this twice more, making three loops in that one corner.

  She wrote this down.

  Then she picked up her hook and, making the stitches a quarter inch apart, made a series of loops across the edge, working from right to left.

  She wrote this down, too.

  She continued around the handkerchief to the starting place, making three loops at the corners—this reduced puckering—writing as she went, and thinking.

  Excelsior was an interesting little town. Normally the sisters stayed in cities, which offered ready access to museums and art galleries, as well as to auction houses, which were the sources of their income. But once in a while they stayed in a little town, whose treasures were less well known and less picked over.

  A shame there was this long delay between the discovery of the jam-packed Riordan house and the distribution of its contents. She was getting restless with all the waiting. To heck with the snow, to heck with the possibilities of that house; she wanted to move on. Georgie wanted to wait, of course. Her sister had more nerve than she did . . .

  So until they made up their minds, she would work on this crochet pattern for Ms. Devonshire—who was turning out to be a surprise. Not just a small-town shop owner but a clever sleuth. She’d probably started that second career out of sheer nosiness. By the way, that was a damn attractive boyfriend she had in tow.

  There, she was done with the first round. Satisfied she’d made a good beginning, Grace went to bed.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  AS had become routine, when Betsy rose early on Wednesday morning for her thrice-weekly water aerobics class, Thai followed her around the apartment. He didn’t ask for anything, or get underfoot. He was just there, like a loyal friend determined to be present. He watched her pull on her old swimsuit beneath jeans and a thick sweater. He balanced on the side of the tub and watched her brush her teeth, and then pluck her zippered bag off the hook on the back of the bathroom door, already stuffed with shampoo, deodorant, comb, and underwear. He followed her to the door, and after she left the apartment, he gave a little sigh and went to rejoin his fellow feline, Sophie, and Connor, who were still in bed.

  * * *

  IT was a few minutes to six as Betsy rolled up Highway 7, heading east. It was dark out; the sun wouldn’t rise until going on eight. Her class at the Courage Center started at six thirty. She stayed on 7 until it intersected with Highway 100 and headed north a couple of miles, then took the Duluth Street exit. And just about a mile later, she turned onto the road that led to the Center.

  The two-story windows that fronted the pool glowed golden in the darkness. There were other cars in the parking lot. Sometimes it was hard to believe there were as many as a dozen other crazy people who came to exercise in warm, warm water at this hour of the morning.

  What was perhaps more surprising was how many of the clients were retired seniors. Some had begun coming while they were still working, because they could get their hour of exercise in and still make it to their offices on time. Perhaps the early exercise had become enough of a routine that they found it easy to continue. Others had never had to beat the clock to exercise. It was just easier to get this part of their day done early enough that it didn’t interfere with whatever else they had to do.

  Betsy, of course, was one of two or three exceptions: She still had a job to get to. Would she continue to work out after she retired? She wasn’t sure. Maybe she’d do it if she could persuade Connor to come with her.

  She greeted her fellow water buffs in the women’s locker room: Rita, Ingrid, Sarah, Gerry, Renee, Gloria, Diane, Cheryl, Barbara. They rinsed off in the showers and went out into the pool room. The water was perfectly still; it almost seemed a shame to break that calm surface. The men arrived then: Jim, Peter, Marty. The instructor stood on the far end of the pool, waiting for them all.

  He was something of a novelty at the Courage Center. All the instructors heretofore had been women, so everyone was surprised the first time he showed up. He was slim b
ut extremely fit; Betsy was a little surprised by her own reaction to that hard young body. Surprised or not, it was pleasant to watch him move.

  He had them do warm-up stretches such as raising and lowering their arms while turning the hands over and breathing deeply in rhythm to the movements, and soon enough he’d upped the ante, getting them to “surprise their muscles” by mixing movements, such as cross-country ski legs and jumping-jack arms.

  The class went fast, and by quarter to eight Betsy was on her way back home.

  There, she found Connor up and making breakfast. This morning it was old-fashioned oatmeal with dried cranberries and chopped walnuts, sweetened with Splenda’s version of brown sugar, augmented with a generous dollop of half-and-half. He’d also prepared some thick-sliced bacon. The teakettle was murmuring softly, keeping the water hot for black tea.

  “You’re too good to me,” she said, coming to the table after changing into work clothes. Today she wore a sunny yellow sweater spattered with autumn-colored leaves and a brown wool skirt. Just for contrast, she wore bright blue lizard-hide shoes and matching sapphire earrings.

  “Yes, I am,” he admitted with a smile, in an unsuccessful effort to sound sheepish. He poured hot water into the teapot where the tea leaves had already been placed, covering it with an embroidered tea cozy while it brewed. “What’s on your agenda today?”

  “I want to contact Chester Teesdale,” she replied, picking up a slice of bacon with her fingers.

  “He’s the one who took the rifle?”

  “I believe so.”

  Betsy had looked for Mr. Teesdale on the Internet, but she’d found almost nothing except an e-mail address. And when she sent him a short message, it bounced. According to her online research, he lived in a part of Excelsior located on the other side of Highway 7, a place seldom visited by people who lived on this side of it.

  So, around ten thirty she phoned him, dialing the number she’d found listed. No answer, no voice mail, not even an older message machine.

  She tried again at noon. No answer.

  At three, she tried once more.

  “Yuh,” he answered after four rings.

  “Mr. Teesdale?”

  “Who wants to know?” He sounded a little suspicious but mostly uninterested.

  “My name is Betsy Devonshire, and I’m calling about the Marlin thirty ought six you took from Tom Riordan’s house and left on your father’s grave a couple of weeks ago.”

  “What makes you think that was me?” he said sullenly.

  “Wasn’t it you?”

  “So if it is, what business is that of yours?”

  “I’m not sure. Have you heard from Sergeant Mike Malloy of Excelsior PD?”

  There was a startled pause. “No . . . But I been out most of the day.”

  “Is there someplace we can meet? I’d really like to talk to you.”

  “We’re talking just fine right now. What do you want? Are you a cop, too?”

  “No, but I am conducting a private investigation.”

  “What about?”

  “First of all, about the disappearance of a bolt-action rifle from Tom Riordan’s house. You were in the house the day it vanished.”

  “Suppose I tell you I don’t know anything about it?”

  “Then I would think you are lying to me. You gave your name to Ms. Shipp, who is in charge of the Riordan property, you were seen in the house, you were working in the living room where the rifle was located, and you abruptly left the house around noon with no warning. The rifle was there in the morning and gone in the afternon. What was so remarkable about that rifle that you felt you had to take it away with you?”

  After a pause, he spoke very quietly. “It was my dad’s gun.”

  “I should have figured that, since it was found on his grave. So it was a sentimental gesture, giving it back to him after Tom stole it?”

  Another pause. “Well, yes.”

  “I think you’d better be careful when Sergeant Malloy comes to talk to you, because he’s quicker than I am at detecting falsehoods.”

  “What do you want?” Teesdale shouted over the phone, sounding oddly near tears.

  “I’ve already gotten what I want,” Betsy said. “I wanted to know why you took that rifle, and you just told me. What I want to know now, is why you put it on your father’s grave.”

  “The rifle didn’t belong to Mr. Tom Take, it belonged to my father! My father is dead. And the thief is dead now, too, which means no one should object if I take the rifle! So I short-circuited the legal process and took it back, so what?” He hung up the phone, hard.

  Startled, Betsy paused to think. Okay, she could tell that last statement was true, or nearly so. But why did Teesdale put it on his father’s grave? If the rifle now belonged to him, why not keep it? Perhaps it had been his father’s favorite weapon—or even his grandfather’s. There were some big emotions laid bare in that truncated conversation. Not just tears, but angry tears. There was something big, and important, that Teesdale hadn’t said. But what was it?

  Betsy needed to find someone who knew Teesdale, someone who might tell her about him. And not only him, but his father, too.

  She decided to start with Mike Malloy.

  “Who? What?” was Malloy’s initial response. “Oh, him. Yeah, he’s kind of a thorn in the constabulary’s side.”

  “‘Constabulary’?” queried Betsy.

  “What, did I use the word incorrectly?” He didn’t sound as if he thought his choice of word was wrong.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I just didn’t think . . . um . . .”

  “You didn’t think I was the sharpest hook in the tackle box, I know.”

  “Now, Mike, I don’t think that of you.”

  “Damn right. Well, never mind. Tell me again what you want to know about Teesdale.”

  “Is he a drunk?” Betsy asked. “Or maybe a thief?”

  “No and no. Marijuana’s his brain-killer of choice. Actually, I wish he’d smoke more of it; the stuff makes you slow and lazy, and his favorite occupation on Saturday nights is getting into fistfights. One of these days he’s going to seriously injure someone and do hard time.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “What am I, a psychiatrist? I not only don’t know, I don’t care. He’s a pestilent germ in the body of this city. I wish there were a vaccination that would cure him.” And on that somewhat mixed metaphor, he ended the conversation.

  Betsy thought hard about who she might approach next. Anyone who’d had numerous run-ins with the law over the years in Excelsior would have crossed swords with Sergeant Lars Larson. So Betsy called his cell and left a message.

  About an hour later he called back. “Wassup?” he asked, his relaxed, genial tone making her smile.

  “What can you tell me about Chester Teesdale?” she asked.

  “Junior or senior?”

  “Oooh, there’s stories about both of them?”

  “Sure—though the stories about the senior one usually also involve the junior one. Their hate-fest goes a long way back, and only ended when the old man died.”

  “What was the main problem between them?”

  “Junior was a big disappointment to his dad. He was a bright kid, the only boy among three girls, and his dad had high hopes that the kid would make him proud. But the story, at least as it was told to me, was that the kid took his dad’s rifle and sold it, and his dad beat him so badly that his mom had to take him to the emergency room.”

  “Merciful heavens!” exclaimed Betsy.

  “Now I don’t know if that story is true or not; you know how gossip is. But from that point on, the kid was in constant trouble, skipping class, smoking dope, and getting into fights. He finally dropped out of school, got kicked out of the parental home, and hasn’t held a job longe
r than a few months ever since. I’ve broken up a few of his fights, and in some cases I think he’s more sinned against than sinning. I also think the fact that the rifle ended up on the senior Teesdale’s grave is significant. How is it significant? Who knows? Your guess is probably better than mine.”

  Indeed, thought Betsy on hanging up, who would know?

  She asked Godwin, who was a notorious gossipmonger. “I want to find out more about Chester Teesdale. Who do I ask?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody in the Monday Bunch knows more than me about him—and I don’t know much, except that he’s a grouch and thinks everyone is telling lies about him.”

  Micki Paulson, Betsy’s newest part-timer, asked in a reasonable tone, “Why don’t you just ask him?”

  “Ask who?” said Godwin.

  “Chester Teesdale. He already told you the gun was his father’s and now it’s his. Why don’t you go ask him nicely why he put it in the cemetery? Maybe he loves his father and feels bad his father didn’t get the gun back before he died.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Godwin said. “Take Connor with you; Chet won’t be as likely to poke you in the nose if there’s two of you.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  CONNOR was pleased to come along; he’d been feeling bored and useless lately. The outdoor auctions had begun winding down as fall threatened to slide into winter, and the indoor auctions seemed stale and unprofitable. Besides, there was more to life than auctions.

  Connor wanted to feel useful to Betsy in some new way following his faux pas down in the shop. The fact that he heedlessly interfered in her business probably indicated he was starting to get restless, a very bad sign. All those years at sea without a real home base had contributed to his wandering soul. So long denied a permanent home, it became unnecessary, even undesirable, to find one. But now he wanted to settle down, sink roots. He loved this woman, Betsy Devonshire. Surely that was enough to bring about the changes necessary to find himself finally home from the sea.