Knitting Bones

by Monica Ferris

  “Could he have gone back inside?”

  Schulz thought about that for a little while. “Not while the firefighters were there; they pretty much took over the entrance. Did you know they set up fans to get smoke out of a building? Big honkers.” Schulz made a very large circle with his arms. “Cleared the air fast.”

  Omernic went back over his notes. “What’s this about a suitcase?”

  “Well, he’d packed one to leave, then he had the accident and didn’t go. And I guess he was too banged up to be bothered unpacking.”

  “So you’d seen it before.”

  “Yes, when I brought him his prescriptions the day after he came home from the hospital. He must’ve been going out of the country.”

  “Why, was it a big suitcase?”

  “No, but there was a passport on top of it. I just forgot it was there when I came into his place.”

  Omernic thanked him, and wondered if that passport was still there. If not, perhaps Milan had gotten on that plane after all.

  Twenty-two

  OMERNIC went to talk some more to the building manager who said there was no suitcase in the apartment when he went in to start cleaning up. No, not just none in the living room, there wasn’t a suitcase in the apartment. Yes, he opened the two closets. No passport lying out in the open, either. Of course it could have been put into a drawer; he didn’t open any drawers.

  “Anything gone missing?” asked Omernic.

  “I didn’t notice anything—but I wouldn’t, would I? Except if he took the couch or the bed or the stove, and he didn’t.”

  “I was thinking like toothbrush, underwear, aftershave,” said Omernic. “And maybe there’s a notepad by the phone with an address on it, telling us where he’s gone.”

  The man rubbed his jaw while he thought. Then he shook his head. “Nope, I didn’t notice anything missing in particular, or a note with an address on it. But I wasn’t looking, either. Want to go in yourself?”

  “Not right now,” said Omernic, thinking of the rules about admissible evidence. “But could you lock the door and keep it locked? I may be back later with a search warrant.”

  “So the fella was a crook, was he? I kinda wondered.”

  “You did? Why was that?”

  Here the manager became a little vague, perhaps because Omernic’s tone was sharp.

  Omernic asked, “Have you changed the locks?”

  “I’m about to do that right now.”

  “Good. If Mr. Milan comes to you asking to get back inside his apartment, let him, and call me right away.” He gave the man a card with his office and cell phone numbers on it.

  Omernic came back a few hours later with a search warrant and a small crew. The warrant described Tony Milan, aka Stoney Durand, as a murder suspect and possible fugitive, and stated that the police were looking for evidence of flight and evidence relating to the murder of one Robert Germaine. The search took longer than Omernic thought necessary—but searches generally did—and afterward Omernic asked the manager some more questions.

  Though it was past quitting time when all was done at the apartment building, Omernic went back to his office and sat down at his computer terminal to write up his notes.

  Milan was last seen outside his apartment that night with only his crutch. He’d been fully dressed, so he also had, probably, his wallet and keys. No, obviously he had his wallet and keys, since he’d gotten clean away—meaning a cab or other transport he’d paid for—and since he’d gotten back in without breaking down the door. (The manager had repaired the damage done by the neighbor in breaking in.)

  But now a suitcase, a passport, and the two prescriptions Schulz had picked up for him were missing. An airline ticket, unused and still in its little folder, was found in a wastebasket. It was issued to a passenger named Ronnie Moreland and was budget class to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, via Paris. So he’d been thinking of skipping the country—evidence of guilty knowledge. Also of some preplanning, since the flight was to have left the day after Bob Germaine was murdered.

  So why hadn’t he gone? Omernic wondered. He was out at the airport, that’s where he stashed Germaine’s body. Why hadn’t he just gone to the main terminal and spent the day there, safely away from his apartment, to take the evening flight out of the country?

  He’d come all the way back into the city—how? By light rail, possibly. Why? To collect his car—where had he left it? And been driving—where? Home, probably, to pick up his suitcase and ticket—why hadn’t he put them in the car?—when a drunk ran a light and rammed him.

  He saved the file and shut off his computer, wondering if that woman with the keen brain and broken leg out in Excelsior had any ideas.

  Before he could leave, Lieutenant O’Bryan, Omernic’s boss, came in. “I’ve got some more information for you on that Tony Milan case you’re working,” he said.

  “Yessir?” said Omernic, sitting back down and pulling out his notebook.

  “I had a meeting today with the FBI, a Heart Coalition executive named Erskine Morrison, and a couple of bank representatives from First Express and Wells Fargo,” he said.

  “Why the fed?” asked Omernic.

  “Bank fraud,” explained O’Bryan.

  Omernic took notes as O’Bryan told the sad story of how the Heart Coalition was defrauded of contributions by means of a phony bank account set up by Tony Milan at First Express, and how it came to light when a contributor complained her check went astray. Bank fraud is a federal crime, so now the FBI was also after Mr. Milan.

  “How much did he steal?” asked Omernic.

  “Fifteen thousand two hundred and sixty-three dollars, over a period lasting just over a year. Not enough to jiggle any alarms at the Heart Coalition, he was pretty clever about that. He drew on the account, so there’s only a little over four thousand left. He made an attempt to close it the day he was fired, but questions were raised—he didn’t have his Heart Coalition ID anymore, and he was acting pretty hinky. He said he’d come back, but of course he didn’t. I take it you busted him while I was at the meeting.”

  “No, sir,” said Omernic, and explained about the fire, and how it was a pity that this minute he wasn’t sitting in an interrogation room across from Tony “Stoney Durand” Milan. Godwin DuLac and his backer, Ms. Devonshire, were pretty damn clever figuring it out.

  “Oh, this won’t do, Sergeant,” said O’Bryan. “I want this man found. I want him found right away.” When O’Bryan was upset, a faint Irish accent showed in his voice. It was currently present.

  “Yessir,” said Omernic.

  So without a break for supper, Omernic went to a leather bar called the Eagle near downtown Minneapolis. He didn’t envy O’Bryan, doubtless having a conversation with the chief about this.

  The Eagle smelled of hard liquor, oiled leather, and cigarette smoke (Minneapolis was “smoke free” but no one wanted to be the one to tell the Eagle’s customers not to light up). The bartender had a shaved head and an eye that didn’t track.

  Omernic could feel waves of hostility coming off him and the customers, most of whom seemed addicted to both weight lifting and tattoos. But he maintained his cool, which warmed the chill enough to get an answer or two. Some acknowledged they knew Stoney. But no one had seen or heard from him since he was hurt in a car accident.

  Omernic next tried the Gay Nineties on Hennepin, where dropping Godwin’s name elicited several confessions from people who had heard from Stoney. He had wanted a place to stay after being burned out. But no one had granted his request, and none knew where he was staying.

  Omernic then went to Vera’s, a coffee bar over on Lyndale. Here the atmosphere was much more pleasant. Mostly young people sat at tables in a comfortable room overseen by a large color portrait of a woman with the dress and hairstyle of the 1930s. They looked ordinary enough, drinking coffee or eating sandwiches or salads, some poking at laptops. But men sat strictly with men, and women with women. There was a nice deck outside, fes
tooned with strings of lights, but they were waving hard in a driving wind that was whipping the boards with sleet, so it was unoccupied.

  Omernic asked the young man behind the counter if he knew Stoney Durand. The response was somewhat elliptical—but when he dropped Godwin’s name, the young man unbent. And the purchase of a big, gooey cinnamon roll and a large café latte made him almost friendly. Yes, he knew Stoney. No, he hadn’t seen him in a while, maybe two or three weeks. Well, yes, he’d heard from him, got a phone call from him. Stoney said he’d been burned out of his apartment and was looking for a place to stay. No, he hadn’t invited Stoney over, Stoney was inclined to invite third parties over without permission, to borrow money without paying it back, to poke through drawers and pockets when no one was looking and take things that weren’t his. And while he could dish the dirt and was a great cook, sometimes that just wasn’t enough.

  Two other men in the room also knew Stoney, and one had also received a request for a place to crash for a couple of days, a request turned down for pretty much the same reasons. “What goes around comes around, you know,” said the man with an air of being original. None of them knew where he was right now. None of the women had ever heard of Stoney Durand.

  Omernic went back to his office downtown to turn his notes into a report. And leave an e-mail message for O’Bryan that he hadn’t located Tony Milan.

  Twenty-three

  BETSY was in the back bedroom the next morning, working on her computer. She had long ago discovered that the only way to get her data entry stuff done—hours worked, sales taxes collected, bills paid, etc.—was to do it before she gave herself permission to check her e-mail or read RCTN or the ANG list, or cruise the Internet.

  She muttered to herself as she worked. “Is that a five or a six? Marti has the worst handwriting!” She was trying to read a pair of sales slips, which in her shop were still filled out by hand.

  The crow made a comment in a quiet gurgle, and Betsy looked over at the creature, which was looking back at her with one shiny black eye. “Hello, crow,” she said, but it did not reply.

  She continued muttering and entering figures, and again the crow made the soft sound. “You talkin’ to me?” Betsy said, looking at it. “What do you want? You’ve been fed, your water is fresh, your cage is clean.”

  The bird cocked its head from side to side, turned around on its perch in a single hop so it could look at her with its other eye, and made a long comment that sounded like a dog choking on a bone fragment and ended on a squeak.

  “Argher-gurgle, bek, bek, eek to you, too,” said Betsy, and went back to filing numbers.

  The crow flapped its wings, and Betsy looked over yet again. “Is something wrong?” she asked. “What is it?”

  The bird looked down at the floor near the china cup that held its dinner. On the floor was a bit of orange that it had dropped or flipped out of the cup. Betsy said, “Oh, is that it?”

  Betsy could not get down on one knee—or rather, if she did, she would not be able to get up again. Having dropped a pen and a tablet of sales slips yesterday, she had taken a pair of hinged salad spoons from her kitchen to keep on her desk. She used that to pick up the tidbit and put it in the cup. The crow went immediately to it and ate the treat.

  When she had worked about ten minutes longer without hearing from the bird, she looked over to find it crouched on its perch, regarding her with its eyes half closed.

  “That’s right, crow,” she said. “You think about that.”

  WHILE Betsy was at work upstairs, Godwin was unpacking and stocking an order in the shop, occasionally pulling an item for himself. One was a packet of tapestry petites, blunt needles, shorter than usual, used for counted cross-stitch or needlepoint. These petites were about an inch long, which would allow him to use floss down to near the very end. Godwin liked silk floss, a costly indulgence, and less waste of expensive floss makes a happy stitcher.

  He was humming a pleasant tune to himself when the phone rang. Part-timer Shelly was closer, so she picked up. “Crewel World, Shelly speaking, how may I help you?” She listened briefly, then called, “Godwin, it’s for you. Someone named Larry Thao.”

  Godwin put down the Tweezer Bee he was hanging on a spinner rack—he’d decided his own tweezers would do a while longer—and came to the phone.

  “Hello, Larry, what’s up?”

  “Goddy, my dear boy, did you know there’s a big, ugly policeman taking your name in vain at Vera’s?”

  “Whatever do you mean? Oh, wait, is he tall, with light blah hair, a nose like an Indian, and green eyes?”

  “I was too intimidated to look into his eyes, but that nose—! You don’t mean he’s one of us?”

  “No, of course not! He’s investigating a murder.”

  “Well, how does he know you?”

  “Because I’ve been investigating it, too, and I found a suspect my very own self, and now he’s looking for him. Tony Milan is the suspect’s real name, though he goes by Stoney Durand, too.”

  “Oh, my God, Stoney is a murder suspect?”

  “Didn’t Sergeant Omernic say so?”

  “He did not! Fancy that, our Stoney a murderer!”

  “Do you know Stoney?”

  “Yes. Not well, but yes. He’s awfully butch and he has a taste for leather, but he also knows his way around a kitchen. I went to a party where he spent the entire evening in the kitchen, turning out hors d’oeuvre after hors d’oeuvre, all of them different, all delicious, and the presentation was beautiful, simply dee-vine! I thought I was falling in love—did I mention that he’s awfully good looking?—but someone told me that he—Stoney, that is—stole his—my informant’s—diamond earring at a hot tub party. So when he—Stoney, that is—phoned me a couple of days ago to beg for a place to stay because his apartment had caught on fire, I said I had company already staying with me and had no more room. I guess that was a better decision than I knew at the time, because he might have murdered me in my bed!” Godwin could hear the shiver Larry gave right through the phone.

  Godwin said, “If he calls you again, see if you can find out where he’s staying and then you call me or Sergeant Omernic immediately, all right?”

  “Well, all right. But I don’t want him mad at me, do I? Stoney, I mean.”

  “I’m sure someone as clever as you can get Stoney to talk without him suspecting a thing.”

  Larry purred, “You sweet thing! When this is over, you must come to my place and tell me all about it.”

  Godwin agreed and hung up. He stood a few moments, hand on the phone.

  “Something wrong?” asked Shelly.

  “Oh, no, I guess not. I just thought this person would be in jail by now. I don’t like the thought of him running around free.”

  IN the early afternoon, Rosemary Kossel—she of the fresh complexion and advanced knitting skills—was sitting beside Betsy on her couch. Betsy was holding a square of mitered knitting in her hands. “Okay, where do I begin to pick up the twelve stitches on this to do the second square?” she asked.

  “Where was your ending point?” asked Rosemary.

  Betsy turned the square around, looking for loose ends, which were on opposite corners. She had worked the square in yellow and maroon yarns and, as promised, it appeared she had knit around one corner of her square. The corner where the yarn turned was uppermost; Betsy turned the square around so it formed a diamond. There was a loose end of yarn sticking out of what was now the top. “I started here,” she said, and reached down to the opposite corner, which also had a tag end of yarn. “So I ended here.” She put a big safety pin into the square near that corner.

  “Good,” pronounced Rosemary. “Now, turn it one more time, so that ending corner is on the bottom right.” Betsy gave it another half turn, making it a square again. “Using your main color yarn, the color you started with, pick up twelve stitches along the top row. Remember, what you’re trying to do is end up with a square of four mitered squares, with all four
turning points aimed at the center.”

  Betsy did as instructed, noting that it was easy to pick up the stitches with Rosemary’s clever instruction of slipping the first stitch of every row and purling the last. After a minute she said, “Okay—but I need twenty-five, not twenty-four stitches for my next square.”

  “That’s right. So pick up a thirteenth stitch on the point. Then cast on twelve more.”

  After a minute, Betsy said, “Done!”

  “Very good. Now do what you did with the first square, row one: Knit twenty-four, purl one, still using your original color.”

  Which in Betsy’s case was maroon.

  “Now, using your contrast color, slip one knitwise and knit ten.”

  “Got it,” said Betsy after another two minutes.

  “Good. Slip one, knit two together, pass the slipped stitch over the stitch you made knitting the two together, then knit ten, purl one, and turn.” Betsy, tucking the tip of her tongue into the corner of her mouth, made the row as instructed.

  “Very good. You’re knitting much faster than you used to, you know.”

  “It’s all that practice. Which I don’t mind, because I love to knit. Let’s see, for row two, I just knit my way back in the contrast color, purling the last one.”

  “Don’t forget to slip the first stitch.”

  “Oops, that’s right! Okay, here we go.” Without that pause for a complication in the middle, this row went fast.

  Then, using the maroon yarn, Betsy slipped one knitwise, knit nine, slipped one, knit two together, slid the slipped stitch over, knit nine, purled one. Then she starting knitting her way back with yellow.

  “How are you getting on with your broken leg?” asked Rosemary, who had taken out a project of her own, a piece of fine lace she was knitting in number 10 thread with size 0 needles.

  “All right, I guess. The doctor’s happy with my progress. I’d skip doing the exercises, but if I do the muscles will lose their tone, and I’ll have to go into rehab, which will keep me out of the shop another couple of weeks. It’s already driving me batty staying away this long. I miss it. What do retired people do?”