Stewart laughed aloud in pleasure. “That’s great! That’s just great! Thank you! What do you say, girls?”
Katie’s eyes filled with tears. “I guess you don’t have to wonder what I’m going to pick. This is so great. Thank you so much!”
CeeCee said, “I was only at Aunt Edyth’s house one time. Do we get to go look at what’s there? Or do we have to say what we want now?”
“Of course you get to go look, honey,” said Jan.
“I think I remember there were statues of horses in one room,” said CeeCee.
Marcia smiled. The child was fourteen and, of course, mad about horses.
“I’ll arrange for a key to be given to you on the day you decide to go for a look,” she said. But as she wrote up some notes on the meeting and composed a letter to be sent to family members confirming the arrangement, she reflected on how cleverly Stewart had brought up the subject and, starting with his children, had managed to get himself in on the deal. She wondered how familiar he was with the house—by his own admission, he’d been going out there lately. She decided she’d better get out there first and have a look around. And she’d bring someone with her who had an eye for antiques.
BETSY sighed as she looked at the beautiful but complex Tapestry Tent canvas Jill Cross Larson had brought in. Jill was buying far fewer needlepoint canvases since she had quit her job. The reason was in her arms: Emma Elizabeth Larson, aged six months.
Jill had meant to take a few weeks of maternity leave then return to her desk job in the police department. As a sergeant, she was earning more than Lars, so it seemed a reasonable thing to do.
But when the time came to return to work, she took a week’s vacation, then used up her accumulated sick leave—Jill was never ill, so that gave her another three weeks—and at the end of that, she’d reluctantly concluded there was no way on earth she could leave her daughter for work. The decision surprised everyone, Jill perhaps most of all. But once the decision was made, she’d settled into homemaking with utter content.
She was also digging into her stash of unfinished projects. She’d come up with the hand-painted canvas and was seeking advice along with the wools and silks she’d need to stitch it.
“Well, it’s got an awful lot of detail,” said Betsy. The canvas was a Christmas stocking, with Santa in a gold-embroidered red suit standing in front of a shadowed Christmas tree covered with small, cat-themed ornaments. The floor around him was full of cats of every description; he was stroking a cat on one shoulder, and there was a cat in each coat pocket. Everything was subtly shaded; it would take infinite patience to indicate the shading without making lines.
“Maybe blended stitches here and here?” asked Jill, touching Santa’s rounded belly and bent arm.
“Maybe,” nodded Betsy, studying the canvas. “But you know, this may be a place for shadow stitching. Have you heard of it?”
Jill frowned. “I think so. It’s a technique that lets the colors show through, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. You use one strand of wool instead of three, for example, or silk or DMC cotton instead of needlepoint wool. Do complex stitches in the appropriate colors, but let the shadings come through. I have a chapter of Amy’s book Keeping Me in Stitches that’s pretty good on it, I hear—though I haven’t tried it myself.”
Keeping Me in Stitches was a set of loose-leaf chapters on various elements of stitchery; a person could choose among them, buying only the chapters she was interested in.
“May I see it?”
Betsy brought one from the box shelves. Jill looked the chapter over and decided she’d try it. “If it doesn’t work, well, I’m used to frogging.” Jill was never unwilling to rip out stitching that didn’t satisfy her.
“If you don’t like it, bring it back. If you do like it, will you write a review for our newsletter?”
“Deal,” said Jill. After paying for the chapter and some Kreinik silks, she said, “Have you found out anything helpful for Jan Henderson?”
Betsy smiled. Jill didn’t need to be working as a cop to know about this; the Excelsior grapevine was available to anyone with ears. “I hear Sergeant Rice went to the funeral but didn’t arrest anyone.”
“No,” said Jill, “he wasn’t there to arrest anyone. He was there to see how everyone was behaving.”
“You mean, to see if someone was snickering at the eulogy?” asked Betsy with a smile.
Jill smiled back. “Well, sometimes it’s a little more subtle than that. Have you got any ideas about who our perp might be?”
“No. I think it’s going to hinge not on who owns a set of double-zero steel knitting needles—anyone can walk into a needlework shop and buy a set for a few dollars—but on who knows how to use one as a murder weapon.”
Eleven
TWO days later, the family met again, this time at Edyth Hanraty’s house. They came in several cars: Susan riding with her son, Jason, in his classic Corvette convertible; Jan and Hugs and their son Ronnie in their Chrysler LeBaron (Reese, still away at school, had opted out); Stewart with his wife, Terri, and daughters Lexie, Bernie, and CeeCee in their three-year-old SUV; Katie with her husband, Perry, in their five-year-old Saturn.
The house stood on a low, broad slope across the road from Gray’s Bay of Lake Minnetonka. It was fronted by a stone wall with a wrought-iron gate—now, as rarely during Edyth’s life, standing open. The grounds were dotted with well-tended flower gardens, shrubs, and big trees.
The house was large, of course, but severe in shape. It had been built in the Craftsman style, with a low-pitched roof that overhung the walls. It was two stories high with a single-story, many-windowed addition on one side and a porte cochere on the other. All the windows were vertical rectangles, proportionally identical. The porch was large, with a roof that echoed the pitch of the house’s and featured square wooden pillars.
Susan had the house key. She paused a moment, as had her daughter on the morning Edyth’s body was discovered, to admire the floral pattern carved into the quartersawn oak door before unlocking it. Then she turned to make sure everyone who wanted to be there was present. Eyes shiny with anticipation, they all crowded close as Susan inserted the key.
The front entrance hall was large, with a light-oak staircase rising on the left. A set of windows faced the stairs, casting golden lights on the risers. Another window on the landing helped fill the hall with light, illuminating a magnificent red, yellow and navy blue Navajo blanket mounted in a large shadow box.
“Wow!” said Jason.
“I forgot about that blanket,” said CeeCee. “It’s real, isn’t it? I mean a Navajo woman wove it a long time ago.”
“That’s right,” said Katie. “Your great-grandmother bought it on a trip to the Southwest in 1901.” Katie had been in the house more often, and more recently, than her youngest sister and had heard many stories.
Susan said, “Great-grandfather used it on camping trips. It was Aunt Edyth who discovered how valuable it was and had it mounted for display.” She led them to the right, into the big parlor, a symphony in brown and plum, down to the Berber carpet.
Lexie, who hadn’t been in the house since early childhood, pointed to the huge, boxy couch with its high wooden sides and dusty plum cushions. “I remember this! Did Great-aunt Edyth make it herself?”
“It is kind of homely,” agreed CeeCee.
“But it isn’t homemade,” said Bernie, walking around to look at it from a different angle. “It’s some kind of style, I think.” She turned to Susan. “This isn’t Art Deco, is it?” she asked.
“No, it’s called Mission or Craftsman.”
Jan said, “Believe it or not, this sort of thing is very collectible right now.”
“I’m afraid I don’t think much of the Craftsman style,” said Terri, who had never been in the house at all.
“Then you probably won’t want any of the furniture in the place,” said Stewart, stroking her absently while looking around.
“N
ow, wait a second, look at that. That isn’t Craftsman.” Katie, one hand on her swollen belly and the other touching the side of her face, nodded toward a small, four-legged pedestal, with some kind of animal head marking where each leg fastened to the square top. It was delicate and very beautiful. Equally delicate was the lovely object sitting on it. Shaped rather like a jack-in-the-pulpit, it was a vase made of golden-sheened glass.
“Oh, my,” breathed Terri, reaching as if to touch it, but drawing her hand back.
“That little table used to be in the guest bedroom until Aunt Edyth caught me putting a cold drink on it without a coaster,” said Susan. “It’s a hundred years old. She bought it in New York during the Depression for almost nothing. But the vase on it is Tiffany, which was expensive even when it was new. It’s an early example, so it’s particularly valuable today.” She looked around at the people staring at it. “Any takers?”
After a long silence, Jan—who had been waiting to give everyone else a chance—said, “I’ll take it.”
“Good for you, Jan,” said Stewart. “Now the ice is broken. Anybody else see anything they like?”
“Oh, look at those chairs!” exclaimed Katie.
Over by the set of rectangular front windows was a pair of wooden chairs with round seats bracing a potted palm. The high backs partly surrounded the seats and were made of slats that went all the way to the floor, an echo of the design of the couch. The seats were padded with cushions worked in a green and white William Morris pattern of acanthus leaves.
“Are those Craftsman, too?” asked Jan’s son Ronnie.
“Yes. And those as well,” replied Jan. They turned back to look at two big, deep easy chairs with purple leather seats and wooden arms slouched near the stone fireplace.
They looked at Katie, but she had made her choice a few days ago, and it lay waiting in the kitchen.
“But that isn’t,” said Katie’s husband, Perry, pointing to the large painting over the fireplace. Framed in unstained oak, it was a messy piece, done in shades of blue, red, yellow, black, and green on white canvas. Wild streaks of color curved across it, with here and there a vertical stroke, and, in two places, what looked like a dribble. There was nothing recognizable in it, no hint of a human figure or landscape.
“I guess that’s what you call an abstract painting,” said Stewart dismissively.
But Bernie said, “Ooooh, I like it!”
“Now, don’t be sarcastic, Bernie,” said Susan to her niece.
Bernie’s pale eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I’m not being sarcastic. I really like that, it’s like…like Aunt Edyth on her motorcycle, going really fast.”
Ronnie snorted.
Bernie ignored him and asked her father, “Do you think I should choose that as my one thing?”
He twisted his eyebrows and looked askance at her. “If you bring that home, it has to stay in your room.”
Lexie said immediately, “Only if she hangs it in the closet.”
“Now, Bernie,” said her mother, “you shouldn’t go asking for the first thing you see that you like.”
“But I really like it! Honest!”
“Oh, Mama, she doesn’t want that, she’s just being perverse—” began Lexie.
“We can pick anything we want, and I want that painting!”
“That’s enough, Bernie,” said Terri. “Let’s just say for now you have dibs on that painting, all right?” She looked around. “Unless someone else wants to claim it?”
There was a chorus of hasty denials, and Bernie beamed at them.
Terri asked Susan, “What’s next?”
“The dining room, I suppose.”
The dining room was too large for the round wooden table and six chairs crowded around it. The table was on a very thick pedestal. Stewart said to Susan, “Do you know how this works?”
“I sure do.” She came to help Stewart pull the chairs away, then each grasped a side of the table and pulled. The table top pulled open into three slice-of-pie parts. A triangle shape rose from the center of the pedestal. Then Stewart leaned in to the center of the table, reaching in to push sharply downward into the open space. Loaded on springs, a board leaped up. He repeated the operation twice more, and the three boards were laid into the open spaces of the table top. A gentle push brought the table together in a new shape, that of a rounded triangle, and now the six chairs were merely sufficient.
“Oh, that’s so clever!” exclaimed Terri, coming to rub her hands on the shining surface. “And such a beautiful table. I just love the shape!”
Stewart said, “Well, my dear, why don’t you claim it?” He smiled warmly at her.
She smiled back, liking the idea, then looked over at Susan. “All right?”
“Of course. It’s lovely, and it’s good that it will stay in the family,” said Susan.
“So it’s ours? Brilliant!” said CeeCee, coming for a look. “I just love the way it goes together!” She bent over the shining surface to trace the seams with a forefinger, then ducked to look at the underside.
Lexie came for a look at the chairs. “I thought all the furniture in the house was Craftsman, but I don’t think these are. For one thing, they’re not oak, like all the other furniture.”
Susan said, “You’re right, Lexie. This isn’t the dining room table I remember from my childhood.”
From under the table came CeeCee’s voice. “It says Hovby on a label down here. And Made in Denmark.”
“Did Aunt Edyth ever visit Denmark?” asked Ronnie.
Stewart and Susan looked at one another, shaking their heads. “Not that I’m aware of,” said Susan.
“Vell, it’s not like you can’t findt Svedish vurniture in Minne-soooo-ta, you bet,” said Jan, with a singsong Scandinavian accent. The others laughed.
“Anyway, thank you very much,” said Terri, and she stroked the table again.
“I believe the kitchen is next,” said Stewart.
The kitchen was large but without a center island. The appliances were old but in excellent repair; the cabinets were painted white with hammered-copper handles. Katie went straight to the walk-in pantry to open the silver-cloth-lined drawers that contained the enormous silver flatware collection. She lifted out a ladle whose bowl was shaped like half a poppy flower and two tablespoons with stylized leaves clinging to the handles. “Oh, I claim this, I claim this!” she exclaimed and began counting the rest of the tablespoons noisily. “…Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four! Wow!”
Then her bright smile faded as she paused for a few seconds, thinking. She came to a conclusion and turned to put the pieces back, closing the drawers, pausing again, head down, before coming out of the pantry to face them. “I looked up this style of silverware on the Internet yesterday,” she confessed, “and Art Nouveau silver really is very valuable. It can easily cost ten thousand dollars to buy a set as big as this. I don’t think I should take it all. It’s a service for twenty-four, and I’ll never have two dozen people over for a sit-down dinner. I want to claim half.”
Stewart said, “Now wait just—” But his wife gave him a look that shut him up as easily as if she’d flipped a switch.
Then everyone looked at Susan and Jan. “Come on.” Jan sighed and took her mother back into the dining room, out of earshot of the others. “Well, we knew when we agreed to this that she’d pick the silver. On the other hand, it’s sterling, a service for two dozen with all the odd extra pieces, like salad knives and ice cream forks. Art Nouveau is a desirable style to serious collectors, and it may even be one of the most expensive things in the house. Should we take her up on her offer to claim only half of it?”
Susan said, “Are we going to help her with her college loans?”
Jan frowned at this sudden swerve in the conversation. “I had certainly thought to do that. Why?”
“Because she can sell half the silver and pay them off—and pay for her master’s degree, too, probably. That set isn’t just Art Nouveau
, it’s an extraordinary set, worth far more than ten thousand—I talked with an expert in Chicago yesterday about it. Katie says she’d be satisfied with half the set. Fine. I think we should let her take the whole set and sell half of it. It’s obvious that while she’s feeling guilty about taking something so valuable, she really loves it. It’s not like I want it—I’m not that fond of Art Nouveau. How about you?”
Jan shrugged. “It’s attractive, but I’ve got the Henderson silver already, and this certainly doesn’t match it—the Hendersons went for Georgian.”
“Jason always hated polishing our silver, remember? He doesn’t even want mine when I’m gone—says it’s too much maintenance. That means if Katie doesn’t take Aunt Edyth’s silver, it will be sold out of the family. Which would be a shame.”
“Not to mention that if we say she can’t have it, it will look as if we’re going back on our promise, which doesn’t seem very nice.”
They looked at one another and nodded. Susan led the way back into the kitchen. “The whole set is yours, Katie.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Katie came to hug them both, then ran to kiss her father loudly on his cheek. He returned the kiss and grinned hugely. Katie exchanged tiny but sincere screams of joy with her sisters, then, almost as an afterthought, hurried to hug her mother. Then, still beaming, she went to lean on her husband, who smiled and put his arm around her, having endured all this in gentle silence.
Stewart said to Jan in a teasing voice, “Maybe you and your mother should reconsider that promise. We’ve got pretty good taste, you know. It may turn out that painting Bernie likes so much is even more valuable than the silver.”
“Oh, shut up, Stew!” said Susan, but not angrily. “Come on, let’s keep moving or we’ll be here all day.”
The library had two glass-fronted cabinets placed where the sun could not get at the books in them. Both were full of first editions, one by men, the other by women, further evidence of Aunt Edyth’s strange opinion of the male gender.
Sins and Needles Page 11
