Knitting Bones

by Monica Ferris

  The caller was Janice Hamilton, head of accounting, she of the soft Southern accent and the mind like a steel trap. If there was a problem Janice needed help with, it was a serious problem.

  “Can you come up right now?”

  “Yessir, I can.”

  She came in a few minutes later, a heavyset black woman in a red pantsuit with white trim and low-heeled red shoes, limping on her bad leg, waving several documents in one hand. “I think we have us a serious problem here,” she said, coming to a stop and falling heavily into one of the chairs against the wall.

  “What kind of problem?” he asked.

  “We may have another thief here at the Coalition, and it ain’t just take-out Chinese he’s stealin’, but contributions.”

  “Oh, Lord.”

  “You mean, Lord have mercy, and you got that right. If this gets out, we’re likely to lose our jobs, if not the whole Minneapolis branch. Now here’s how it came to light.” She held up a thin collection of pink phone slips. “This lady, Miss Elena Bedford, called last week to say she sent us a two-hundred-dollar check in honor of her mother, who passed this past spring of congestive heart failure. Miss Elena sent it in to us in July, and now she’s pulling together her records for taxes and she couldn’t find any acknowledgment from us for her gift. So she’s been calling us and I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find any record of receiving it. But the check has been cashed, according to her bank statement. Now you know how nowadays banks don’t send your cancelled checks back to you, so Miss Elena wrote her bank asking for a copy of the front and back so she could claim it. An’ what she sent me is a photocopy of the bank’s printout copy, so it’s kinda hard to read. But it’s clear enough.” She rose awkwardly, handed the top sheet to Erskine, and fell back into the chair again.

  The front of the check showed that Ms. Bedford—or Miss Elena, as Janice’s old-fashioned Southern ways would have it—had bought her checks from a mail-order company, because after a moment he deciphered the squiggle pattern ornamenting the face of it into morning glories being visited by a hummingbird. The check was handwritten in schoolgirl cursive to the Heart Coalition in the amount of two hundred dollars. The back of the check bore the imprint of a stamp as endorsement. It looked at first glance like the one the Heart Coalition used but then Erskine grunted. The name of the payee was the Heart Fund. And the second stamp below it indicated the bank was not one the Heart Coalition had an account with.

  Erskine looked up at Janice. “What do you think?”

  “I think this is probably not the only check intercepted and paid into this account.”

  Erskine sighed. He agreed with her. The degree of effort it had taken to set up this fraud would hardly be worth it for just one check.

  “On the other hand, I think I know who we should look at first for this.”

  “Who?”

  “That man we fired for theft, what’s his name, Tony something—Milan, that’s it. He worked in the mail room, and one of his jobs was opening mail.”

  That was actually a cheering thought. Only one crook in the company, not two. And Janice was right, Tony Milan had been in a perfect spot to divert incoming contributions. Someone in Personnel should have thought of that when they found out Milan was a thief and investigated further before firing him. Though wait, if there had been no complaints of missing checks—and there wouldn’t be, because Milan could get them out of the system before anyone else even saw them—there had been no reason to spend time and money looking further. So give ’em a pass on this one.

  “Meanwhile, what do we do about this check?” Janice asked.

  “There isn’t anything we can do—well, belay that, there is one thing: Contact Elena Bedford and instruct her to contact her bank. Her bank can start an action; it’s called ‘an affidavit of bank fraud,’ I believe. I note that this check has the account number set up by the thief, so the bank can identify him—or her, let’s not get too hasty here—as the person who set up the account and deposited this check.” He handed the papers back. “Is there any way we can determine if and how many other checks were detoured into this account?”

  “No, because we never got a chance to run them through our system.”

  “So that lets us off the hook, except for the fault of hiring a thief to work in a place where he got to handle money.”

  “And that’s a serious fault, don’t you think?” asked Janice. “‘Lead us not into temptation.’”

  “All right, yes. We should have known better. But I think the First Express Bank would be glad to open their records on this account if they can find a legal reason to do it.”

  Suddenly Janice grinned and cawed, “Hah-heeeeeee!”—her high-pitched laugh. “We may not have been too smart at first, but we learn fast, and Mr. Tony is going to be sorry he thought he could play us!”

  SERGEANT Stan Omernic was five-eleven and one-eighty, broad-faced with narrow, gray-green eyes, a twice-broken nose, and dirty blond hair. Minneapolis was going through a bad patch, and he had more homicide cases than he could readily handle, so he performed a kind of triage. The cases involving gang members killing one another went to the bottom and got the least attention, because bad guys killing bad guys was, as far as he was concerned, not altogether a bad thing. The deaths surrounding domestic violence were in the middle, because they didn’t take a lot of effort, and so were easy to solve. The kind involving stranger on stranger were often difficult and took a lot of effort, and so were near the top. On the very top were the hot ones that caught the attention of the press and/or the government. These, fortunately, were few. Ones in which a child was the victim were the worst, the most heartbreaking to work, but happily right now he didn’t have a child murder. On the other hand, the mayor, the city council, and the press had been following the Robert Germaine case before it even became a homicide. That a respected man, an executive in a reputable charity, would steal a check representing funds gathered by a sweet group of women needleworkers was odd enough all by itself to get the attention of the press and the chief of police. Now that the suspect had been found in the trunk of his own car, a murder victim, everyone was howling. How could the police have been so wrong in accusing him of theft?

  And they had been wrong. Worse, they were two weeks behind in investigating the real crime.

  The phone rang. Omernic groaned as he reached for it. What fresh hell was this? He didn’t know it was salvation in the person of a woman with a broken leg and a secret crow.

  Twenty

  OMERNIC drove to Excelsior, about thirty minutes away from downtown Minneapolis. The sky was clear overhead, though clouds were approaching from the northwest, dark gray ones that promised rain, sleet, or snow in a couple of hours. Temps were in the middle thirties, and the wind shoved his car around a bit as he came up Highway 7. The trees, he noted, were mostly bare, though some bushes still glowed a deep red, and the oaks held onto their brown leaves. Here and there, a shrub that hadn’t gotten the word at all was still defiantly green.

  Excelsior had redesigned the exit so it no longer lunged to the left and crossed to the right up and over the highway and some old streetcar tracks. Instead, it contented itself with leaning right and crossing up and over some restored streetcar tracks, coming down alongside a nursing home. The street came to a halt at an intersection that had five corners instead of four, and he picked the one that went off to the upper right and curved around past a tall clapboard condo building that overlooked the lake. On the other side of the street was a dark redbrick building, two stories, whose ground floor held three businesses. The upper story was apartments. The first business was a deli, the third business was a used-book store with the clever name ISBNs, and the middle store was Crewel World.

  As he pulled to the curb, he saw a young man standing in the big front window, hanging miniature tree lights across the top. The window itself had clear plastic suction cups stuck all over it and hanging from them were elaborately colored Christmas stockings ranging in size from
too big for Omernic’s own outsize feet to small enough for his brand-new granddaughter to wear.

  Omernic got out and crossed the street. As he drew near, he could see that the stockings weren’t printed in colors, but embroidered. Some had simple designs—one was two leafless trees standing in snow—and some were very complex, featuring Santa Claus and reindeer or Santa and a Christmas tree or Santa and young children. Two were religious, one with the Three Kings in gorgeous apparel stacked up the leg of the stocking and the other with an angel whose wings had very detailed feathers hovering over a sleeping babe. Another stocking, middle size, had chickadees and cardinals resting on branches of holly. Another…Omernic looked up and saw the young man looking back at him, a smile playing around his mouth. Omernic raised a disapproving eyebrow at him to show he was here on serious business and went into the shop. A two-note electronic alarm sounded as he opened the door.

  The store was carpeted and there was a lot of yarn around, some hanging from pegs on a wall, some piled in baskets. The effect of all that fiber was very restful, as if God had said, “Hush a minute,” and put a stop to the cacophony of the world. There were a few sweaters and shawls, so few they were probably examples of what customers could make themselves from the yarn. And there were pictures of Santa Claus and castles and game fish painted on unframed canvases. Some were pinned to a strange contraption comprised of thin canvas doors on a single hinge fastened to the wall. There was a good-size table in the middle of the room with a tall lazy Susan holding scissors and knitting needles and rulers and crochet hooks in its center. Track lighting on the ceiling. Classical music playing softly. An attractive place.

  A young woman with red hair—a deep, rich auburn not like that Kool-Aid color the young affected—and Harry Potter glasses came out from behind a glass-fronted counter. “May I help you?” she asked.

  Omernic dug for his ID folder. “I’m Sergeant Stan Omernic, Minneapolis Police.”

  Her face went from friendly-helpful to dismayed surprise. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Not in here, as far as I know,” said Omernic.

  “It’s all right,” said the young man from behind them, climbing off the step stool. He wasn’t quite as young as he’d looked through the window, Omernic could see he was probably twenty-six or-seven. “I think Sergeant Omernic wants to talk to me,” he said. “I’m Godwin DuLac.” He held out his hand.

  Omernic shook it. “Is there someplace we can talk?” he asked.

  “Certainly. Follow me.” Mr. DuLac sashayed—there was no other word for it—toward the back of the shop. Ceiling-high box shelves displayed books with titles as varied as Stitch ’N Bitch, Helen M. Stevens’ Embroidered Animals, and Needlecrafters’ Travel Companion. There were pyramidal stacks of knitting yarn and gadgets he could not guess the use of. The box shelves divided the front from the back, with an opening in the middle. Omernic followed DuLac through the opening, where he stopped to take in the scene. There was a second store back here, with specially designed upright-angling shelves holding thin booklets, and spinner racks dripping scissors, packets of needles, and lots of embroidery floss. The walls were covered with framed examples of embroidery that were, in some instances, elaborate and startlingly beautiful.

  “What is this, a kind of museum?” asked Omernic, looking up and around.

  “No, these are models of patterns we sell. The patterns themselves don’t look like much, so models inspire our customers or help them decide what they want to stitch next. The front of the shop is for needlepoint and knitting, mostly; back here is for counted cross-stitch and punch needle, mostly.”

  Omernic nodded, not too surprised that all this might be called something other than embroidery, there being subgenres in everything. But there was no need to have it clarified; he was not here to interview Mr. DuLac about the intricacies of needlework. “I received a very interesting phone call from a Ms. Betsy Devonshire this afternoon,” he said. “She told me you have been interviewing people who might have helpful information about the death of Robert Germaine.”

  Godwin gave a pleased smile. “She told me she was going to call Mike. But you talked to her, not him?”

  “Who’s Mike?”

  “Mike Malloy, he’s our own investigator, with the Excelsior Police Department. Betsy has helped him before, lots of times. He didn’t like it at first, but I hear he’s come to accept that he can use her help with some of his cases.”

  Omernic had, in fact, spoken to Sergeant Malloy and was amused at this glib put-down of a very competent investigator, though he was careful to hide it. He got out his notebook and took Godwin through an examination of all his actions in finding out about and locating Stoney Durand, also known as Tony Milan. His first impression of Mr. DuLac as light not only in the loafers but in intellect underwent some revisions along the way. He was no airhead.

  DuLac insisted that the real credit for all he’d discovered lay with his boss, Betsy Devonshire, owner of the store. Ms. Devonshire, he said, normally did her own sleuthing in addition to working in her shop, but she was currently confined to her apartment upstairs, having suffered a badly broken leg a few weeks ago.

  It was Ms. Devonshire who had phoned Omernic earlier, and he closed the interview with DuLac by saying he would go up and see her now. Mr. DuLac asked if he might warn Betsy she had company coming, sweetening the request by saying he’d show Omernic a back way up the stairs so he wouldn’t have to go back outside and ring the bell.

  Omernic agreed and two minutes later was upstairs knocking on Ms. Devonshire’s door.

  “Just a minute!” came a call from well back in the apartment, and it was just about that long before the door opened and a moderately plump woman with streaky-blond hair and nervous blue eyes stood there on crutches looking up at him. She was wearing a loose-fitting dark blue dress and using two crutches to stand up. Her lower right leg was encased in a buff-colored hard-plastic boot with a rolled-down bright blue sock covering her toes. The other foot was sensibly shod in a walking shoe.

  “I’m Sergeant Stan Omernic, Minneapolis Police,” he said. “We talked earlier on the phone. Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong?” she said, trying to quell her nervous look by opening her eyes wide and smiling falsely. “No, nothing’s wrong.”

  “What you said on the phone to me earlier, do you now want to revise that in some way?” he persisted.

  “Oh, gosh, no!” she said. “Not at all. Come in, come in, Sergeant.” She stepped back, turned and moved away, and he came into the narrow little hall. A door to his left opened into a galley kitchen, but straight ahead was a spacious, low-ceilinged living room done in lots of red. She led the way into there, moving well on the crutches.

  The red was mostly in the carpet, but the chintz curtains on the windows had red as well as cream flowers on them. The walls were cream colored, and the room’s cozy look was completed by the knitting left on the seat of an upholstered chair and a large, fluffy cat staring complacently from her basket under the window.

  Omernic knew the cat was a female because she was three colors: mostly white with gray and red-tan blotches down her back and up her tail. Tomcats can never be more than two colors. Omernic liked collecting esoteric little facts like that.

  “Here, won’t you sit down?” Betsy said, gesturing at the couch, which was gray with bright red in the embroidered cushions, moving to take the upholstered chair for herself. “Can I get you some coffee?” she asked, turning without sitting down. “Or tea? The water’s hot, it won’t take a minute.”

  “No, thank you,” he said, sitting down, his cop antennae vibrating toward her.

  “I’ve got some cookies, too,” she continued. “I’m glad you came out so promptly, it was good of you to take me seriously.”

  She was anxious about something, but trying to conceal it by talking a little bit too much, nodding at him on the couch while she took the chair, ostentatiously putting the knitting into a carpetbag beside the chair, then sm
oothing the skirt of her dress with both hands. They were shapely hands and the curve of her cheek, while mature, was sweet. She looked at him with a direct stare out of keen blue eyes.

  And while she was worried, she seemed to want his attention on her, which was odd. Normally, people nervous about having a cop in their apartment wished to become one with the furniture. Unless they were dope dealers with a pound of something illegal hidden on the premises. But dope dealers were only very rarely middle-aged women who owned small businesses. What was it she didn’t want him to see?

  He looked around the apartment, which was tidy and nicely furnished. The couch looked freshly upholstered, the chair was done in a gray, red, and white chintz that echoed the drapes. Across the room, near the kitchen was a dining nook with two chairs and a round table that held a small vase of silk flowers. In the other direction—

  “What is it you wanted to ask me, Sergeant?” Betsy said abruptly.

  So whatever it was, was back there, in a bedroom or bathroom.

  “May I wash my hands?” he asked, rising and heading that way.

  “Certainly—it’s the door on your left,” she said, so he went straight ahead and opened that door.

  He found himself in a bedroom—a big, beautiful, iron-framed four-poster bed stood to the right, with a lacy comforter and lacy pillows on it and on the left a small but businesslike desk with a computer on it. Crowded between the bed and desk with a computer was something very large and cube-shaped, covered with a hastily tossed dark blue blanket. There was a smell of chicken coop in the air. He hooked two fingers in the edge of the blanket to lift it upwards and was immediately rewarded with a sharp pain.

  “Ow!” he shouted and dropped the blanket.