Sins and Needles

by Monica Ferris

  “So you didn’t tell Katie to pick the silver,” said Betsy.

  “No, she’s wanted that silver ever since she first saw it—when she was about ten years old. I told her to register the pattern for a wedding present, but she couldn’t find anything like it. Then I told her to ask about buying it at the estate sale. And then I brought up my idea that each of the girls should get to pick something, and when they didn’t jump all over me, I decided to expand the request so that everyone got a chance to grab something. I wouldn’t have done it, except it’s not like Jan or Susan are hurting for money.”

  “Susan seems rather down on you, but Jan doesn’t.”

  He nodded. “Jan’s a good sport. If she were mine, I’d say she was a chip off the old block—but for her to be mine I would’ve had to’ve gotten married before I started shaving.” He grinned.

  “Did she know your Aunt Edyth well?”

  He considered that. “Pretty well. When Jan started nursing school, the old woman asked to see her—there was a bit of a rift between Susan and Aunt Edyth over Susan’s marrying so young, and visits really slacked off. But Aunt Edyth liked Jan. Not Jason, of course. I don’t think he’s been out there more than four times his whole life. But Jan’s kind of a regular.”

  “Did they ever quarrel that you know of?”

  Stewart shook his head. “Not that I ever heard of. And I think Jan would’ve told me. She and I are buds from way back. I used to take her fishing when she was just a tyke, back before I started having my own set of girls.”

  “So Jan was quick to approve your proposal to let your daughters pick an item from the house?”

  Stewart nodded. He was using a wad of bread to soak up the last of the delicious sauce on his plate.

  “And this proposal wasn’t a scheme to get your hands on items of value to fund your fishing business?”

  “No, it wasn’t.” He dropped the bread on the plate and looked at Betsy. “Do you have children?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad, because then you’d understand how I love my girls and want to give them everything they need to get a good start in life. I’ve never been a good provider. I just can’t get the hang of it somehow, so I couldn’t give them the finer things myself. But I wasn’t going to pass up a chance for them to acquire something of real value. They may have to sell those things, but the money will be theirs, to pay for college or whatever they need.” He said it very firmly. Betsy nearly smiled to think Stewart was confessing that his latest business scheme wasn’t the surest way of building a secure fund for his daughters.

  Since she was paying for the lunch, she got to ask if he wanted dessert.

  “They do a terrific cherry cobbler,” he said promptly.

  So Betsy ordered some, too. After it arrived, she continued. “Susan said she quit going to her Aunt Edyth’s house when she got into high school, but I’m wondering if she didn’t spend a last summer there later than that. I know she’s quite a bit older than you—”

  Stewart smiled a little sadly. “Ten years isn’t as big a gap nowadays as it was when we were kids.”

  “That’s very true. Do you recall what year it was when Susan last spent part or all of a summer at the Hanraty house?”

  Stewart looked up at the ceiling while he calculated. “I was going into third grade, I think. No, fourth. The summer before I had gone out there a couple of times with Suze and got to ride in the boat, but for some reason that summer she got to stay out there the whole vacation and I wasn’t allowed to go at all. Susan was being a typical teenager, full of angst and very touchy. Mama said she’d come home happier, but she didn’t. I was upset about not getting another boat ride, I remember—but I did get to go see the place decorated for Christmas.”

  “What year was that?”

  He thought for a moment. “That must have been the summer of 1959.”

  Betsy smiled. “That was the year Alaska was admitted to the Union.”

  “Was it?” He looked at her, surprised. “You may be right. But don’t you mean Hawaii and Alaska? Didn’t they come in together?”

  “No, they made Hawaii wait until the next year, 1960.”

  “The things you know,” he said admiringly.

  “But you’re sure 1959 was the year Susan spent the summer with your Aunt Edyth?”

  “Yes. She hadn’t gone out for a long stay the year before, but she went the whole summer that year. And that was the last time. She never went on even an overnight trip out there after that. Of course, she got married right out of high school, so she must’ve been dating Dave by then. Aunt Edyth was very disappointed about her interest in boys, so I bet that summer was a long one for Susan, with Aunt Edyth trying to talk Susan out of getting serious over Dave. I can remember our mother saying the letter she wrote to Susan after the wedding burned the fingers of anyone who touched it.” He smiled. “I think that was the first figure of speech I ever really understood.”

  “Did she ever express direct hostility to you?”

  “Not to me, no. As a representative of the male sex, you bet. You started her on the subject, and she’d give you a real stem-winder.”

  Betsy was still thinking about Stewart’s last comment when she got home from lunch. She was in the middle of straightening up the apartment when the phone rang. It was Jan, very distressed. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “I’ve been calling and calling!”

  “I’m sorry, I just got home a little while ago, and I forgot to check my phone messages. What’s the problem?”

  “That police detective, Sergeant Mitchell Rice, came over to our house last night with a search warrant! He went into my needle case and counted my Skacel steels—and the one that was missing is back! I told him I didn’t replace it, but I’m sure he doesn’t believe me! He took all of them away with him, and I’m sure he thinks I’m a murderer! Betsy, I don’t understand why there was one missing and now it’s back. I didn’t replace it! What am I going to do? I’m sure he thinks I murdered Aunt Edyth. What will I do if he comes and arrests me?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the clinic, of course! Can he just walk in and put handcuffs on me?”

  Betsy tried for a soothing tone. “I don’t think he will do anything like that, at least not right now. It’s not illegal to lose and then find a knitting needle.”

  “But I didn’t lose it. That’s what’s really scary!”

  “Then someone else took it and either replaced it or brought it back. Who’s been in your house since you first noticed it missing?”

  “Who knows? People can walk in any time they want!” Jan’s voice had risen perilously high.

  “Jan, Jan, calm down. Are you saying you usually leave your doors unlocked? Come on, think, talk to me. This may be important.”

  “Yes, okay, I understand. All right.” There was the sound of a breath being taken. “All right,” she said again, in a quieter voice. “No, I don’t leave my doors unlocked when no one is at home. Let me think. Lucille and Bobby Lee came to supper night before last. Katie came over earlier that afternoon to borrow a knitting pattern. Uncle Stewart brought her. He was taking her out to lunch, I think.”

  “Did any of them have access to your sewing room while you weren’t right there with them?”

  “Gosh, let me think.” After a few moments, Jan said, “Well, I guess any one of them could have. Bobby Lee asked to use the bathroom—I think he really likes our bathroom. That’s the second time he’s been in the house, and both times he’s gone up to use the bathroom. I don’t think Lucille did. I sent Katie up to look for the pattern by herself. And I left Stewart alone when I went to make coffee for them. That’s not much help, is it? I mean any of them could have gone up there.”

  “Did Sergeant Rice ask you about someone else having access to the needles?”

  “No—and I didn’t think to tell him. Oh, Betsy—”

  “Now Jan, don’t panic. If you’re really scared, call an attorney. And if you do get asked
to come to the police station, don’t tell anyone anything. They’ll give you that spiel about your right to silence, and you say, all right, I won’t talk without a lawyer present. And stick to that.”

  “Oh, my God, you do think he’s going to arrest me! You think I’m guilty!”

  “No, I don’t—” but she was speaking into a dead phone. Jan had hung up.

  Seventeen

  BETSY decided she’d better check her phone messages. Besides two frantic calls from Jan, she found a message to call the shop. “Betsy,” Godwin said when he answered, “Mrs. Halloway was here a little while ago. She wants to return the knitting needles she bought last month. She’s got the receipt and everything, but the needles aren’t in their original packet. She says she didn’t realize right away they’re the wrong size. I told her I’d have to ask you.”

  Betsy, savoring this chance to do something mundane and shop-related, thought a few moments. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think she only had one project to knit on size fours and doesn’t intend to have another. And I’m a little tired of her using us as a rental store.”

  Betsy smiled at this confirmation of her own opinion. Mrs. Halloway was a great one for returned lightly used items, from books to gadgets. “Offer her half the purchase price, and if she takes it, put them in the table bin.” Betsy kept a wide-mouthed vase on the library table filled with items customers could try out.

  “Gotcha,” said Godwin and hung up.

  As Betsy went back to making her apartment presentable, she got an idea. She called Sergeant Rice at his office in Orono, but he wasn’t there, of course, so she left a message asking him to call.

  She had barely hung up when her doorbell rang, and she went to buzz in Lucille and Bobby Lee. They walked in with that attached-at-the-hip pose common to newlyweds—which they weren’t. So perhaps they were more like the couples in the scary movies who find themselves in a large, dark forest and hear a deep rumbling from not very far away. In this case, it was Lucille being the hero, and Bobby Lee the nervous sidekick.

  Betsy, trying to convince them she was not the big, bad wolf, said, “Sit down, please. May I offer you something to drink? I have Diet Pepsi, Diet Squirt, and raspberry iced tea.”

  “The tea, please,” said Lucille.

  “Pepsi, thank you,” said Bobby Lee, his drawl more apparent than his wife’s.

  Betsy filled three tall glasses with chipped ice and poured the drinks over it—she selected the tea for herself, too. She gave them their drinks and sat down in her comfortable easy chair. “What do you think of the weather we’re having?” Though it was warmer than yesterday, the high today had been only in the mideighties.

  Bobby Lee grinned. “Feels like the middle of November to me.”

  “Doesn’t it ever get cold in your part of Texas?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Lucille. “Late in December or early in January we usually get some frosts—once in a while, it even snows. But it melts the next day. We did have a bad ice storm a few years back, though it was worse just up the road in Oklahoma. I like it up here like it is right now. It’s very comfortable.”

  “Just a little colder than back home this time of year,” said Bobby Lee, mildly venturing to disagree.

  “Well, yes,” conceded Lucille. “But summer back home can be cruel. Some days my daddy used to say it was hotter than a goat in a pepper patch. I like this better; in fact, it’s the oddest thing, how I feel kind of at home. Like I’ve returned after a long time away.”

  “Not me,” said Bobby Lee. “People up here are as cold as the weather.” He pulled up his shoulders as if bracing against a chill breeze.

  Betsy said, “Bobby Lee, I know just how you feel. When I first came here from San Diego, I was really struck by how cool and distant people were. But after I’d been here a while, I realized they’re just as kind as people are anywhere. They just don’t make a show of it.”

  “It’s what’s called Scandinavian reserve, isn’t it?” asked Lucille.

  “Yes,” said Betsy with a nod. “And it takes a while to get used to.”

  The pair were relaxed now, pleased to find a fellow traveler: Betsy was also—or had been—a stranger to these parts.

  “Did you ever see so much water?” asked Bobby Lee. “I bet they have a flood every year. You can’t drive ten minutes without coming to a lake.”

  Betsy said, “We get little floods when it rains too much, but big floods are rare. The land up here is used to dealing with water. I’ve been told the motto on the license plates—‘10,000 Lakes’—is an understatement. Which is also typical.”

  Bobby Lee snorted in wry agreement.

  Lucille took a drink of her tea. “This is delicious,” she said.

  But Bobby Lee put his soft drink down, indicating he’d had enough chitchat. “Why did you want to talk to us?” he asked.

  As usual, Betsy was blunt. “Because I’m trying to prove that Jan didn’t murder her great-aunt. I’ve been poking around, and I’ve found out some things. Unfortunately, they don’t fit together in any way I can make sense of.”

  “I don’t see what we can do to help,” said Bobby Lee. When Lucille seemed about to speak, he overran her with, “And I’m not sure we should interfere. After all, that police detective hasn’t arrested her. Maybe he doesn’t think she’s guilty.”

  “Now, Bobby Lee, I told Betsy we’d do whatever we can to help. After all, Jan’s a friend—maybe more than a friend.” She turned to Betsy. “Does Sergeant Rice really think Jan is guilty?”

  “I know he strongly suspects her, but I don’t think he has enough evidence to arrest her.”

  “Why does he suspect her?”

  “I’m not really sure. I’m not an authorized investigator, remember, so the people in charge don’t have to tell me anything. That’s why I’m grateful you agreed to talk to me.”

  “Well, I can’t believe Jan’s a murderer,” said Lucille emphatically.

  “Me, neither,” said Bobby Lee, but more slowly.

  “Have you met her mother?” asked Betsy.

  “Nope,” said Bobby Lee.

  “No,” said Lucille. “I want to, but I’m scared to. I think she may be my genetic mother, but maybe she isn’t. What if she is, but when I meet her, I don’t like her? What if she isn’t? You know, what if the genetic thing is just some kind of coincidence?”

  “Are you willing to undergo a genetic test to compare your genes with hers?”

  Lucille took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said, exhaling. “Because I have to know one way or the other.”

  “Has Sergeant Rice asked you where you were the night Edyth Hanraty was murdered?”

  “Yes,” said Lucille, “and we were in our cabin, just the two of us. Not much of an alibi.”

  “Do you have a set of double-zero Skacels?”

  Lucille’s eyes widened. “No. That is, I used to have them. I was going to try to learn to knit lace, but it was too hard. I don’t remember throwing them away, so I suppose they’re somewhere in my house, but I couldn’t say for sure. I haven’t seen them for months—but I haven’t been looking. I do know I didn’t bring them with me.”

  “Do you know how to pith a frog?”

  Lucille’s blue eyes widened, but she answered bravely, “Sure. I haven’t done it since college, but it’s not something you forget. I hated doing it, because you cut them open and their little heart is still beating and you don’t know if they can feel what’s going on. But it’s what you have to do to learn what you need to know.”

  Bobby Lee said, “I used to do it for her—we met in a biology class. I didn’t mind it.” He made a descriptive movement with his hands. “It’s not hard to do once you figure out where to stick the needle in.”

  “Bobby Lee!” said Lucille.

  “Yes, please don’t give me any details,” said Betsy, hastily. She took a drink of her tea. “Have you been to see Edyth Hanraty’s house?”

  “No, of course not,” said Luc
ille, surprised. “Why?”

  “Susan gave me a tour. It’s got some fabulous things in it. Edyth Hanraty was quite a collector of antiques and art. I wonder if that taste for collecting got handed down—have you been in Jan’s house?”

  “Yes, just once. It’s nice—nicer than ours, but not as big.”

  “Oh, I think ours is plenty nice,” said Bobby Lee.

  “Did she show you the whole house?” asked Betsy.

  “Oh, yeah, we got what she called the Nickel Tour. She is a collector, but it’s charts; she has a whole filing cabinet drawer full of them.”

  “Have you met her husband?”

  “Once. The three of them and the two of us went out to dinner one night. Hugs—isn’t that a cute nickname?—he’s real nice, and I like their boy, Ronnie, and we all got along just fine.” She looked at Bobby Lee for confirmation, and he nodded in agreement.

  “Hugs is all right,” he said, “despite the nickname.”

  Betsy said, “Lucille, you share a whole lot of likes and dislikes with Jan—almost as if you were identical twins separated at birth. How many of the things you say you like that Jan also likes are real, and how many did you come up with after you met her?”

  Bobby Lee stood up, but before he could say anything, Lucille told him to sit down. “How did you know?” she said to Betsy.

  “Well,” Betsy said, “Jan, she rattled on and on about how alike you are, and I began to wonder how two different women could compile two lists so nearly alike. You know, she was actually relieved to hear that you put some imitation bullet holes in your PT Cruiser, because she wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.”