The Drowning Spool (A Needlecraft Mystery)

by Ferris, Monica

  “What happened?” asked someone whose voice she couldn’t identify.

  Betsy was unable to reply.

  “She was doing pull-ups with the rest of us and suddenly she was unconscious,” said Jim, who was kneeling beside her. “Did you bump your head?” he asked her.

  Betsy shook her head, then raised her shoulders. Had she bumped her head? There was no sore spot she could detect. She pulled herself into a sitting position, trying to slow her cough, which was turning into a retch.

  “’M all right,” she managed. “B’okay. In minute. Two.”

  Somebody draped a big towel around her shoulders. “Try to relax,” said the unfamiliar voice. Betsy felt her shoulders and back being massaged. “We’ve called an ambulance.”

  “No, no. ’M okay. Really.” But she could not stop coughing.

  • • •

  THE doctor at the emergency room of Methodist Hospital could not find any sign of trauma to her head, and so concluded that Betsy had simply inhaled when she should not have and, except for a sore throat and aching lungs, was fine.

  Someone had gathered her clothes and swim bag and given them to the med techs in the ambulance, and miraculously, they were not mislaid, so she was able to change into dry clothing while Connor waited, his face a mask of concern.

  “I’m okay, really I am,” Betsy said in a husky voice. “I admit, it was scary. One second I was thinking about atropine and the next I was stretched on the pool apron unable to catch my breath. I don’t remember inhaling water, I don’t remember passing out. I just was gone, instantly.”

  “Nobody grabbed you by the ankles, as a prank, and yanked you under?”

  “No, of course not, we’re not that kind of a group!”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “What made you ask such a thing?”

  “While I was waiting for them to release you, I had a few minutes to think. And what I was thinking about was a certain George Joseph Smith, an English serial killer.”

  “Why would you think about him?” Betsy asked. “You think someone from my group is a murderer?” She gave a rusty laugh, amused.

  “Mr. Smith was a bigamist who killed several of his wives by drowning them in their bathtubs. He did it in a clever way, without leaving a mark on them—or himself. The way you almost drowned in the pool today made me think of it.”

  “Go on, tell me how he did it.”

  “He would go to the end of the tub where their feet were, grab them suddenly by the ankles, and pull back sharply to make their heads go under the water. It forces water into their nose and mouth, and somehow the shock brings about instant unconsciousness. A very clever forensic investigator back then tried some experiments on female volunteers using one of the actual bathtubs, and discovered how it was done. It’s so fast and effective, he nearly killed one of the volunteers in the process.”

  “When did all this happen?”

  “Smith was hanged in 1915.” After another thoughtful silence, Connor asked, “Do you suppose any of your suspects ever read about brides-in-the-bath Smith? It’s a famous case. Or do I mean infamous?”

  “‘Brides in the bath.’ I have heard about that case. I didn’t know they’d found out how he killed his wives. I thought there were more than three.”

  “He married at least seven times, without getting a divorce between them. He’d marry them, then persuade them to give him all their money, and move on.”

  “He must have been charming,” said Betsy, thinking of Noah. “I think we’d better contact Malloy and tell him about Mr. Smith’s methods.”

  But Malloy was out of his office. Betsy insisted that Connor take her back to the Courage Center to retrieve her car. He did, and then followed her closely all the way home.

  There, she changed into work clothes and went downstairs. Godwin came rushing up to throw his arms around her. “Oh my God, we were so worried!” he exclaimed, squeezing until she began to struggle against his hold.

  “I’m all right, really I am. I got a bad scare, but I’m fine, truly.”

  He let go and stepped back. “Your voice sounds funny.”

  “That’s because I coughed up about a quart and a half of highly chlorinated water a little bit at a time.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be at work, then. What about heading back upstairs to lie down?”

  “No, no, honestly, I’m fine.” She looked around the shop. The sun, still in the north, poured light through the front windows, making all the fibers glow. The Bose was playing something spritely. A heady aroma of coffee permeated the air. Godwin and Betsy’s part-timer, Vicki Sue, were doing some dusting and rearranging of displays. Sophie the cat was curled on her chair, the one with the blue cushion and needlepointed sign reading NO THANK YOU I’M ON A DIET, meant to discourage customers from sneaking her treats. But there were no customers to discourage.

  Betsy walked through the shop, looking for anything awry, but found nothing. She could have sent Vicki Sue away, but the young woman needed the money for college, so instead Betsy said, “I think I will go back upstairs. I’ll check back in after lunch.”

  She went up to her apartment to find Connor mopping the kitchen floor. He was wearing an apron and rubber gloves, which meant he was going to scrub down the counters and appliances as well. He was whistling “Where Did You Get That Hat?”

  Betsy blew him a kiss and went into the bedroom, where she changed into jeans and a chambray shirt and lay down on the bed to take a nap.

  An hour later she was back in the living room, knitting the black roving. And thinking. After a while, Connor came in to lie down on the couch.

  “Penny?” he asked, meaning a penny for your thoughts. Thai jumped up onto his chest and began to knead dough.

  “I’m so discouraged about this case,” she grumbled. “I want to go out and shake something loose—but I don’t know what to shake. Or who.” Her knitting took on a brisk movement until she realized she was in danger of damaging the roving. She slowed down.

  Thai, still on Connor’s chest, turned around three times and lay down. Silence reigned for perhaps half an hour.

  “Connor,” she said at last.

  “Huh—what? What’s the matter?” He had fallen into a doze.

  “What do you think a good forensic technician could have gotten from that torn sheet if it was, in fact, used to carry Teddi to the pool?”

  He sat up, dumping the cat onto the floor, running a hand over his face and yawning. “What would they find? Well, proof it was used to carry Teddi, probably. Her DNA would be all over it. Along with residue from the lavender-scented bath salts.”

  “But would there be any DNA from the person who carried her?” Betsy asked.

  He thought about that. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I’m thinking not.”

  “Yes, I think not, too.” She frowned. “But maybe there would be traces from the vehicle he used. Fluff from the carpet in the trunk of the car, or God knows what from the backseat, or the bed of a pickup truck. And that sheet was splitting, so there would likely be fibers from it coming loose and remaining behind. The police could compare the sheet and whatever it had picked up to the material it rested on.”

  “I don’t think Noah would be foolish enough to carry a fresh corpse in the back of his pickup truck. Someone he passed, or who passed him, in a semitruck or a bus might look down and see it. If that sheet was as thin as you describe it, and poor Teddi was still a little damp, her outline would be clear under it. Or the jostling might uncover her body.”

  “Oh, ugh! Stop, stop!” Betsy cringed in her chair, raising her knitting as if to ward off Connor’s words. Then she lowered her hands. “But you’re right. She would have to ride in the passenger seat if our culprit is Noah.” Her expression grew pained at the picture she was creating in her mind, of a cooling, sagging corpse, its wet, lolling blond head poking out the top of the sheet. She looked over and saw an echo of her expression on Connor’s face.

  “What all this in aid o
f?” he asked. “Mike told you he doesn’t have the sheet. You have some idea of playing a trick to winkle out an admission somehow from one of the suspects?”

  “Suppose the word got out that Mike did recover that bedsheet, and has found proof that it was used to carry Teddi. Suppose word also got out that he intends to get search warrants for the vehicles that might have been used to transport her.”

  “Can he do that? Legally, I mean? Get away, Thai!” scolded Connor. The cat was sniffing at the ball of roving.

  “It doesn’t matter. If I had carried Teddi in my trunk, say, and thought the police were coming by to vacuum up stray fibers to compare them to fibers from the sheet, I’d be off like a shot to clean my trunk.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “A stakeout, so we can catch the guilty party at it.”

  Connor rubbed his face some more. “You may have a good idea there, machree. But why not pass it along to Malloy?”

  “Because none of these people are within his jurisdiction.”

  “Okay, you’re right. And anyway, how would he get the word out? If these men were living in Excelsior, he could tell a few people and inside three hours it would be all over town. But Preston lives in Minnetonka, Noah lives in Navarre, and Tommy lives way the hell and gone out in the country. So,” he added, having just thought of it, “who is going to do these stakeouts?”

  “You and I can do one.”

  “Hey!” protested Connor, alarmed.

  “We’re not going to arrest anyone, just let Malloy know what we saw. He can contact the proper authorities.”

  “Why don’t you contact the proper authorities?”

  “Because I don’t know any of them, they don’t know me, and they’ll just tell me to stay home and mind my knitting store.”

  “Which isn’t bad advice, machree,” said Connor.

  Betsy set her mouth in a firm line. “I’m going to do it, and I’d really like your help. You and I can take one of them, and Jill can take another—and, well, maybe we don’t really need to do Pres, because he’s pretty solidly out of it.” Her expression softened. “We’ll do it as soon as I can think of a way to tell the suspects—even Pres, because Madison isn’t all that far away, he could have driven up here and back again—that the police are coming with a search warrant and a handheld vacuum cleaner.”

  Twenty-one

  AFTER lunch, Betsy went into her carpetbag, dug past the roving in it, and took out a scarf she was knitting from yarn made of recycled silk saris. She sold the yarn in her shop, but had no sample of it on display. Its bright colors and incredibly smooth texture made it a treat for both eyes and fingers. She was doing her usual knit two, purl two stitch with an odd one at either end to keep it from curling over. It was forty-two stitches wide, enough so she wasn’t turning too often.

  As usual, she soon found herself lost in contemplation, first of the knitting, then of the case. She began ruminating about the information she had gathered from the start, from the first time she’d gone into the Watered Silk complex. She remembered meeting Wilma Carter, and hearing her call out, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, start over!” in the pool room of Watered Silk.

  She remembered her shock at learning of a mysterious body afloat in that pool. She remembered Bershada’s indignation that her nephew, Ethan Smart, was under suspicion. She remembered her sorrow when it was revealed that Teddi Wahlberger was ten weeks pregnant when she was drowned.

  She remembered the torn and dirty sheet with the magnificent Hardanger embroidery across its top. She remembered Phil and Doris’s concern when they discovered that Phil’s grandnephew, Tommy Shore, was the father of the unborn child. She remembered Tommy’s persistent, incompetent lying.

  She remembered Frey’s and Lia’s anguish over Teddi’s death, and their persistent and finally successful efforts to make Betsy take Thai home with her. She remembered the surprise discovery of a pair of pillowcases whose Hardanger trim matched that on the dirty, discarded sheet. She remembered the shock of Noah’s good looks and the second shock of hearing that he’d lied to Mike Malloy about visiting the Watered Silk pool.

  She remembered the fun but fruitless night out clubbing with Connor. She remembered Goddy’s clever trick of tracing Teddi’s sketch of exotic Preston Munro and taming it into a face he could recognize. She remembered Sony Munro’s rage when Betsy told her that Pres was dating Teddi.

  She remembered the evening at Mike Malloy’s home, where he told her that Pres was out of the running as a suspect, but Tommy, with his pharmacy access, and Noah, with his knowledge of the building complex and his insulin dependency, were not.

  She remembered . . . Hold on, there was an idea in there somewhere. Her hands slowed, stopped, dropped into her lap.

  Connor, reading his spy novel, noticed her stillness. “Have you got an idea, machree?”

  “I believe I have, my dear, I believe I have.”

  She went into her office and booted up, found the web site for Bar Abilene, and called them on her phone. She raised her voice over the noisy background when the call was picked up, and asked for the manager.

  After a pause, she heard a man’s voice. “Bar Abilene, Morty speaking, who’s this?” And the other phone was hung up. It had gotten a lot quieter; he must have an office in back.

  “Hello, I’m Betsy Devonshire and I would like to talk to the person who writes the Winchell column.”

  “We don’t take complaints about its content,” the man said at once.

  “I don’t have a complaint. I’d like to plant an item in it.”

  “‘Plant an item’?”

  “I’m trying to spook a serious lawbreaker into doing something to give himself away.”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Betsy Devonshire, I live in Excelsior, and I do criminal investigations. But I’m not a cop.”

  “Are you asking me to break the law?”

  “No, of course not. I just want you to put an item in your clever gossip column that may cause my suspect to incriminate himself. It won’t be an accusation or anything like that, just a piece of information that may cause him to jump to a certain conclusion.”

  “Is this person one of our regulars?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask who he is?”

  “I can’t tell you that. Because if he doesn’t jump—or if he’s innocent—I don’t want him treated any differently.”

  It wasn’t hard to convince Morty to plant the item, but it took awhile to convince him that the message would mean something to her suspect.

  After they hung up, Betsy sent an e-mail to Lia and Frey. “Please go to the Winchell column at the web site of Bar Abilene tomorrow after eight in the evening and read the item, ‘Overheard: Mrs. Sherlock and her Irish BFF are talking about bed sheets, trunks, and fibers. Could they be planning a march up the aisle?’ Please call Tommy and Noah, ask if they’ve seen it, and do they think it’s about Betsy Devonshire? (My boyfriend is named Connor Sullivan, btw.) Thanks!” She sent another e-mail to Ramona, asking her to contact Pres about a strange message she’d seen on the Bar Abilene site.

  And having set the trap, Betsy got on the phone with Jill.

  “I don’t know, Betsy, this could be dangerous.”

  “How? I don’t plan on confronting anyone, I just think that if we witness one of them scrambling to clean out his trunk or the passenger cab of his vehicle, we can let Mike know about it. You know how good forensics people are nowadays, there’s no way an amateur could clean up every single trace of evidence, and with one of us as an eyewitness, Mike will have probable cause for a search warrant. Right?”

  “You’re going to do this whether or not I come on board, I assume.”

  “You assume right. I’ll watch Tommy, and Connor will watch Noah.”

  “It would be better if there are two witnesses to the act.”

  “Okay, Connor and me, and you and—who?”

  “Lars, of course. Though I’d like it better i
f it were me and Connor, and you and Lars. I want Lars to be with you watching Noah; Connor and I will take Tommy.”

  “Welcome aboard.”

  • • •

  WHEN Betsy told Godwin of their plans the next morning, he was indignant that he hadn’t been offered a piece of the action. “A stakeout? For real? Just like Dragnet?”

  “Don’t you mean CSI?”

  “Dragnet’s more fun. Dum-da-dum-dum!” replied the fan of old-time radio. “Let me and Rafael come along, please? Please?”

  “Settle down, Goddy, for heaven’s sake! From all I’ve read, stakeouts are boring! And we aren’t going to be part of any action, we’re just going to be sitting there watching. For hours and hours, probably. Even if something happens, we’re not going to do anything, we’re just going to report it to the police.”

  “Please? Please-please-please?”

  “Oh, all right, I’ll tell you what: You and Rafael—if you can persuade him to come with you—can stake out Pres Munro.”

  “Awww, I thought he was cleared!”

  “I have thought Tommy was cleared. I have thought Noah was cleared. Right now I think Pres is cleared. But I can’t prove any one of them is guilty. For all I know it’s Pres. Actually, it’s probably a good idea to cover all our bases.”

  “All right, count me in. When do we start this stakeout?”

  “Tonight. We should all be in place by eight o’clock. We’ll take turns this afternoon scouting out the sites. Look for a place to park that isn’t obviously overlooking their driveway. Then we’ll close the shop early enough to give each of us time to get there. Make sure your cell phone is charged and your gas tank is filled.”

  “I will make it so,” Godwin said, echoing Captain Picard from Star Trek. He went in back to call Rafael and soon Betsy heard him arguing and pleading with his partner. But he came back a little later all smiles. “Rafael thinks it’s a wonderful idea, he’s so excited! We’re going to pack a picnic!”

  • • •