“I didn’t do it at all! Your name just didn’t come into it!”
“But he will deduce that! Oh, Mother, because he had nice manners and is married to a friend of yours, you forgot he is a police detective looking for a murderer. You thought that because he could identify cross-stitching when he saw it that he was on your side. He’s not on your side, Mother.”
“But darling, he said he would be looking outside the family for suspects, not at us.”
“In so many words?”
“Yes, in exactly that many words. I don’t see why you’re in such a snit over this.”
“Oh, I don’t know, either, I guess. It was so awful finding her dead, I think I’m still upset over that. And then to find she was actually murdered—!”
“I understand. It’s enough to frighten anyone. But take a minute, dearest, and just breathe quietly. Let your mind settle. You’ll be all right. Everything will be all right.”
This was the kind of language Mother used when Jan would waken from nightmares as a child, and it soothed her now to hear her mother’s quiet voice.
“All right, I’m feeling better now. Thank you, Mother.”
“Call me later if you start feeling anxious again.”
“I will.” Jan hung up and sat down to weep quietly for a few minutes.
Half an hour later the little receptionist came by again to report another urgent phone call.
“Is it my mother again?” asked Jan.
“No, it’s your uncle Stewart.”
Jan sighed and went back to Doctor’s cluttered little office.
“Do you know your mother called me to say Aunt Edyth was murdered?” Stewart demanded, almost squeaking in his distress. Since his normal voice was a baritone, this squeak nearly moved Jan to laughter. But she took a calming breath before replying, “Yes, I know. She talked to me, too.”
“I don’t understand. Why do they think it’s murder?”
“The medical examiner found some little thing in her head, something metal.”
“What are you talking about, something metal?”
“I think they don’t know what it is. Or maybe they do. Mother wasn’t very clear. A pin, maybe, or a nail. Why don’t you call her and ask? The police were just over there.”
He said plaintively, “I can’t call her. You know Susan and I don’t get along! You’re the one who found her—you must know more about it! When was this ‘murder’ supposed to have happened?”
“Well, I went over there Sunday morning before ten, but she’d been dead for hours. They did the autopsy yesterday, and today the police are going around asking questions.”
“Have they talked to you?”
“Not yet.”
“What will you tell them?”
“How do I know until I hear the questions?” Jan was starting to feel abused.
“I don’t understand about the pin. How can a pin be used to kill someone? Oh, wait, you mean it was stuck in her ear? I think the Mafia used to kill people by sticking piano wires in their ears.”
“No, I heard it was stuck in her skull somehow. Like a nail, except it isn’t a nail.”
“What? He saw it sticking out?”
“No, Mother said the undertaker said he felt it under her hair when he was doing something with the body. So he called somebody—the police I guess—and they ordered the autopsy.”
Jan worked her shoulders to stop the chill flickering between them like summer lightning. Aunt Edyth on a mortician’s slab, with a stranger’s gloved hands on her; Aunt Edyth being cut open by a medical examiner. Jan had attended an autopsy as part of her nurse’s training, and it was one of the most difficult things she’d ever endured. The thought of him opening poor Aunt Edyth’s head—ick, ick, ick!
“Uncle Stewart, I can’t talk anymore. I’m at work. I’ve got things to do. I suspect the police will be calling on you pretty soon. Maybe you can ask them to explain it to you.”
Jan hung up and took several calming breaths. Uncle Stewart was going to be a terrible nuisance until this was over. She wished—as she had wished before—that he and her mother could get along. It would be nice to sic him on Mother. There were times when he was a real pest.
But as her annoyance faded, she began to smile. Annoying as he could be, she’d adored Uncle Stewart all her life, from the day he’d sneaked her off to the circus when her mother had expressly said she wasn’t to go. She’d come home with a balloon and a tummy ache, thrilled to the core from all the exotica she’d seen and the forbidden sweets she’d eaten.
Stewart had been a charming but naughty little boy, then a charming but naughty adult, and now he was turning into a charming but naughty old man. Apparently, he’d been devoutly wished for by Grandmother and Grandfather and arrived only after years of yearning—interesting that miscarriages ran through the family, thought Jan, wandering into a sidebar. Mother had lost babies, Jan strongly suspected, and so had she. But one result was that Stewart’s youth had been spent in a cocoon of indulgence that had left him unprepared for the cold, hard real world. He was a college dropout who had never held a job for more than a few years, and he had mooched shamelessly off his sister until, in despair, she had slammed the door on him—literally, according to both of them, though in very different versions. Mother had been hoping he would finally grow up. Uncle Stewart had seen it as a betrayal of an unspoken agreement. The problem was, by the time the door slammed, it was too late; nothing could change his behavior. Soon after, he’d married a woman he’d been halfheartedly courting. He had thought she was wealthy and indulgent—and she was—a dangerous combination to a man of his boundless ability to squander. She, too, had finally closed the spigot, but only when they were down to a few income-producing investments and a nice lakefront house that she kept adamantly in her own name. Fortunately, she had a good job as a high school principal, which kept them solvent. Stewart made a very good house husband, though Jan sometimes wondered if Terri liked her job as bread winner.
But maybe she was content. Jan had never heard her complain.
There was something sweetly helpless about Stewart that made his friends, especially the female ones, muffle the alarms that sounded when he came asking for yet another loan. He was always cheerful about loans; asking politely and, in this new world of less cash in the pocket, willing to walk around the corner with his victim to the ATM machine, telling a funny story on the way. And unlike most moochers, he hung around after, grateful and ever ready to do favors. He would fetch and carry, clean up, or jury-rig—he was, not surprisingly, talented at making an old car or toy or piece of furniture serve one more turn. One thing he rarely did: repay the loan.
Jan was as susceptible as anyone to her uncle’s charms. She loved his deprecation and self-aggrandizing, even when she knew both were often merely strategy. And too often she had succumbed to his hints that she should forget the laundry, abandon her husband and sons, and go fishing with him—using her boat, her gas, her bait.
Even now, past his midfifties, there was something elfin about him. He’d shrug up his shoulders, wink, and look around as if for eavesdroppers, then suggest they sneak off for a drive, maybe stop for a sandwich and beer at this out-of-the-way place he’d heard about.
Jan smiled to remember all the crimes and misdemeanors they’d committed together. As recently as two weeks ago, he’d come around needing “one of those yuppie foodstamps,” meaning a twenty, because he’d gotten a bargain on cold cereal and what good were half a dozen boxes of Frosted Flakes without milk? She’d long gotten past expecting him to repay any of the money he’d gotten off her, nodding at his usual earnest declaration that one day he’d pay her back all he owed. They both knew better.
But now there was a new element. Jan didn’t know the total of Aunt Edyth’s estate, but she knew it was millions of dollars, with maybe as much as ten million to share with Mother, even after her other bequests. As soon as it was hers, Uncle Stewart—the man with his hand ever out—would be right there.
And this time he’d want a lot more than a couple of yuppie foodstamps.
STEWART was at home with his youngest daughter, CeeCee, fourteen, when the police came calling. Actually, it was just one police officer, a six-foot man probably in his forties, wearing a baggy suit and too-tight tie. He was about Stewart’s height and probably thirty pounds lighter—Stewart had once come across the arch term embonpoint to describe a certain plumpness of person, and ever after used it to describe himself. This man was more big boned than a man of embonpoint.
The cop was polite: “Good afternoon, sir. I hope I’m not taking you away from something important.” Or was that an insult? Hard to tell—his eyes were shiny flat surfaces and his mouth an unexpressive line. He showed an ID card and a badge, which Stewart only glanced at.
“No, nothing important,” Stewart said. Nothing at all, in fact, but an old movie he’d been trying to use as a distraction from the terrible news about Aunt Edyth. It was just starting to work when the doorbell rang. “Come in, come in,” he said quickly, remembering his manners. “Don’t mind the mess.”
“Not at all, and thank you,” said the detective, his eyes darting all around the big living room with its several windows looking out at the lake. It was a beautiful room, in a beautiful house, even if the furniture was rather shabby. The scattering of belongings were mostly Stewart’s: an old shirt, his slippers, his box of Lorna Doone cookies, his boating magazines, his big bunch of keys that gave a satisfying jingle when carried in his pocket. He made a hasty stack of the magazines on the coffee table, then went to turn off the TV.
“CeeCee,” Stewart said, “why don’t you go out in the yard and play for a while? I need to talk to this man.”
“Okay, Dad.” CeeCee, a leggy, long-haired blonde with deep blue eyes, cast a speculative look at the detective and departed.
“Won’t you sit down?” Stewart said to the detective.
“Why, yes, thank you.” The man took the upholstered chair, the one with little bits of stuffing coming up through one arm—their late cat had loved that chair. But it was a comfortable chair, nonetheless.
Stewart sat at one end of the couch and said, “I suppose you’re here because of the death of my aunt, Edyth Hanraty.”
“Yes,” said the man.
“May I—I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” confessed Stewart.
“I’m Sergeant Mitchell Rice,” said the man, reaching into a pocket inside his suit jacket and bringing out a business card, which he handed to Stewart. “Orono PD,” he added.
Stewart looked at the card, which had a lot of information on it that he couldn’t read without his glasses. He rubbed it with a thumb—not embossed, he noted—and put it into his trousers pocket. “May I get you a cup of coffee or a soft drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“Well then, what can I do for you?”
Rice went into a side pocket and produced a ballpoint pen and the smallest notebook Stewart had ever seen. “An autopsy performed on Miss Hanraty has shown that her death was not from natural causes,” he said. “It is the opinion of the Hennepin County medical examiner that her death is a homicide, brought about by a human hand.”
Stewart looked into Sergeant Rice’s inexpressive brown eyes. “You mean she was murdered.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stewart looked away, wiping his mouth with his fingers. “That’s just about too awful to think about,” he said, coming back to look at the man. “I mean, who would want to murder her? She was just an old woman who never did anyone any real harm that I know of.”
“How well did you know her?”
“Pretty well. She was my aunt, my mother’s sister. I used to go to her house a lot when I was a kid. I still go out there—well, I guess it’s I used to go out there, now—to run errands, help around the place. She was pretty rude to me—she didn’t like the male gender; anyone who knew her can tell you that—but she liked the things I could do, lift and haul, minor household repairs, you know the drill. She wouldn’t always thank me pretty, but she never ran me off the place with a shotgun.” He laughed.
“Was she involved in a quarrel with anyone that you know of?” Rice asked.
Stewart widened his eyes in surprise as he shook his head. “Not that I know of. I doubt if you’ll find any sign of a quarrel. She didn’t go out much anymore, didn’t have many visitors outside of the family. She had a housekeeper named Fran March—been there a few years. She was one of a series that started when Aunt Edyth was in her late sixties and couldn’t do for herself anymore. Fran may know if she was mad at someone or someone was mad at her. But I’ll bet you no one was.” He grimaced and dared to ask, “Are you really sure she was murdered? It seems so damn unlikely.”
“The medical examiner says so, and I have no reason to doubt his conclusion.” Sergeant Rice wrote a brief note and then asked, “Where were you last Saturday evening?”
Stewart jumped as if he’d been shot at. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, and instantly cursed himself for being an idiot.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we have to ask.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose you do. But I should tell you, I don’t in the least profit by her death.”
“No, sir, I understand that. Still, could you tell me where you were?”
“Certainly. Here at home.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. My wife took our daughters out to dinner and a concert. One of those girl-bonding things they like to do. I’m not all that fond of Asian food and I don’t like Bach, so I played like a bachelor and fixed my own little dinner, watched a ball game on the television, and went to bed early.”
“I see.”
“Now hold on a minute. My wife called me at least twice, and I was here to talk to her. You can check with her to confirm that.”
“What time did she call?”
“Let me think. About seven the first time and somewhere around nine the second.”
“So your wife was with the four girls, and you were here, but in touch with her by phone.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Cell phone or landline?”
“What? Oh, cell phone. We don’t have a—what d’ya call it?—a landline anymore. Ever since we went wireless on our computers, we couldn’t see the use of it.”
Rice nodded. “How old are the girls?”
“Well, Katie’s just turned twenty-one. She’s married and out of the house, but she comes home a lot now she’s pregnant. And Lexie is nineteen, Bernie’s sixteen, and CeeCee, who you just got a glimpse of, is fourteen.”
Rice wrote it all down. Then he asked, “What is your occupation?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What do you do, sir?” asked Rice, a hint of impatience showing in his voice.
“Oh. Well, at present, I’m a house husband. You know, take care of the house and the kids. I used to be an office manager at Markham and Sons. They run a pair of big excursion boats on Lake Minnetonka.” Stewart tilted his head toward the windows overlooking the lake. “But they decided to give the job to their daughter, so out goes me.” He let the grimace slide into a wry smile. That had been one of his favorite jobs. It was not in the least difficult, and he got to schmooze with the public, mostly while selling tickets, though once he even got to help plan a wedding reception on the Lake Minnetonka Empress, the bigger boat. It wasn’t his fault they invited too many people.
“Is your wife employed?”
Stewart, ruminating on the job, almost missed this question. But he got the last two words—enough to know what the man wanted.
“Yes, she’s the principal of Lincoln High in Wayzata.”
“Do any of your children go to Lincoln High?”
“No, Katie and Lexie are in college, but Bernie and CeeCee decided to go to Orono. They’re all good kids. We’re proud of them.”
“I can believe that,” said Rice. He went back a page in his little notebook and studied something.
“I don’t understand
about how Aunt Edyth died,” Stewart said to fill the silence. “I talked to my niece, and she said something like a pin was stuck in her head?”
Rice nodded and closed his notebook. “Yes, that’s right.” He stood, but looked at Stewart as if waiting for another question or comment. Stewart held his tongue, and Rice said, “Thank you, Mr. O’Neil, you’ve been very helpful.”
“Well, I hope you catch whoever did this.”
“Me, too.”
Stewart showed him to the door and watched him walk out to his car.
The moment he closed the door, Stewart went to pour himself a stiff whiskey and water—hold the water. After the first big gulp, he drank the rest slowly, going over the conversation in his head. Should he have asked him the piano wire question? No. Never volunteer you know something about murder to the cops. He’d done all right, he was all right, everything was going to be all right.
Seven
IT was quitting time, but Mitch never paid much attention to the clock when he was on a case. The first forty-eight hours after a murder were the most important to an investigator—several television shows had made everyone aware of that—but he hadn’t even gotten this case until after that golden window had closed.
Still, he’d collected some useful information. And when he’d seen those counted cross-stitch pieces on Mrs. McConnell’s wall, a lightbulb had gone on inside his head. That piece of metal—not a wire, not a screw, not a nail—resembled, he was pretty sure, a tapestry needle with its eye cut off.
He’d gone back to the medical examiner’s office to ask for a photocopy of the murder weapon and found a small stack of photocopies already waiting for him. The ME had thought to put a little flat ruler beside the thing so you could see the size of it. One copy Mitch posted in the station house with a note:
WHAZZIT? TELL MITCH. WINNING GUESS WINS A SAWBUCK.
He stuck another copy in the file folder he’d started, and he put one in his pocket.
Then he did go home. There, he sat down to a late dinner with his wife and all four of the kids—for a change—then helped get the kids ready for bed. He came downstairs to sit with his wife, who was doing some needlepoint. “Hon?” he said.
Sins and Needles Page 6
