Sins and Needles

by Monica Ferris

  “Yes.” She went to a dark corner of the shed and came back dragging an old metal stepladder.

  Todd opened it, rocked it to settle it more firmly, then climbed up to get into the front cockpit, ignoring the dust and dirt. “Dash looks all original,” he remarked, running his hands over it. “Even the cigar lighter is still here.” He looked over the side at them. “These fittings are made of German silver. All they’ll need is polishing—don’t let anyone talk you into replating them. Or worse, replacing them. That goes for the instruments, too. They were built by Elgin, and originals are rare and expensive.” They heard his feet thumping on the floor. “Solid,” he said, nodding, and poked the green leather seat with a finger. Stiff and dry, it didn’t give. “Leather will need to be replaced. Make sure they match the color,” he instructed them.

  “All that space forward,” said Betsy, lapsing into nautical terminology from her navy days, “what’s in there?”

  “Bracing and a watertight bulkhead, mostly,” he said with a smile. “It’s fourteen feet of style.” He sat back in the dirty, cracked seat, chin up, one hand on the steering wheel, obviously seeing himself roaring across the water. “You know, there are only seven other Baby Gars in the world?” He grinned at them. “Three of the seven have passed through my hands—I have another one right now, fully restored.”

  “How much?” asked Betsy, and he looked at her. “I mean, how much for the other one?”

  “I’m asking seven hundred thousand—and it’s not the boat I suspect this could be.” He stood and stooped to lift floorboards to check the inner planking and frames. “Sound, sound, sound,” he murmured in satisfaction. Then he turned and, drawing a breath, held it and lifted the bifold doors over the engine compartment.

  “Ahhhhhhhh,” he breathed. “I was hoping, and there it is—five hundred beautiful horses, sixteen hundred and fifty cubic inches.” He reached down and caressed something. “All four carburetors intact. Beautiful.”

  “My brother has claimed it from the estate,” said Susan. “He says that except for the engine he can do the restoration himself.”

  Todd looked at her, shocked. “No, no, no! Only professionals should be permitted to work on this wonderful old boat.”

  “What would it cost to have it restored by professionals?” asked Marcia.

  He grimaced unhappily. “Well, okay, a lot. A proper restoration would start at two hundred fifty thousand. That doesn’t include the engine. But it’s worth probably a quarter million right now.”

  Susan gave a little gasp of surprise.

  “And restored, how much?” asked Marcia, notebook in hand.

  “Name your price,” he said promptly.

  “No, you name one.”

  He gave her a charming, slightly wolfish grin. “A million, if we could get it into a bidding war. Maybe more if it belonged to a famous person. P. K. Wrigley’s is out at a museum in Lake Tahoe and is not for sale at any price. If this one belonged to James J. Hill…”

  “I don’t think so,” said Susan, “or we’d know about it; that name wouldn’t be forgotten.”

  All at once there was the sound of tires on gravel. Someone was approaching the shed. Susan and Betsy went out to see an SUV backing a big trailer toward them. Its engine shut off, and Stewart climbed out from behind the driver’s seat.

  “Hi, Suze!” he said, waving cheerily. “Hello, Ms. Weiner. I’ve come for my boat.” Then he looked past them, and the smile died. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  Warner looked surprised. “You know me, because I remember you. My name is Todd Warner. You came out to my vintage boat store and talked to me, oh, last fall, I believe. You’d heard I had a Baby Gar for sale and you wanted to see it. But you changed your mind about buying it because the instruments were replicas and half the planking had been replaced and it had the smaller engine in it. You asked me what I’d charge you for an all-original, fully-restored, bigger-engine Baby Gar, and you smiled when I said a million dollars.”

  Stewart’s ebullience had melted away. He attempted a smile, but it was a travesty. He turned his back on them, heaved a big sigh, thumped the roof of the SUV. When he turned around again, he was looking assertive and confident. “Well, so what?” he said. “So what? I found the Edali in this shed, and I thought, by gum, here’s something of real value, something I could treasure, something I want. Like Katie and that silver, just exactly like that, I want this boat. She’s in love with the silverware, I’m in love with the Edali. But like that big old four-poster, I figured if you knew how much this boat could be worth, you’d never let me have it. So I resorted to—to subterfuge. And so what?”

  “You knew about the Edali last fall?” asked Betsy.

  “Sure. I was putting the dining room table and chairs out here—no way was I going to haul them up to the attic—and I saw it. I couldn’t believe my eyes—the old Edali. Man, the great times we had on that boat, didn’t we, Susan?”

  “Yes, we did,” she said, rather neutrally.

  “And I told you the truth about her over lunch the other day, really I did. It was like my ship had come in—” He snorted a laugh, swallowed, and continued in a wheedling tone, “It was like a sign, Susan! Something I really loved—boating—something I’ve never gotten tired of! How could this not work if I made a business of it?” He wiped sweat from his forehead and turned completely around, hands uplifted, desperate to make her understand. “I talked with Aunt Edyth. I asked her about the boat, did she still want it, could I maybe buy it from her? I said I’d give her fifteen hundred for it. I told her it was probably not worth that, it was the sentimental connection that made me interested in it, just like I told you. And yes, I knew it was a lie, because I already talked to Mr. Warner over there. And you know what she did? She laughed at me! She said, ‘There is not one item on my property I don’t know the value of, from the china in my kitchen to that old motorcycle in my garage. I know the Edali is a Baby Gar, worth more than fifteen hundred, more than fifteen thousand, in her present condition.’ Well, I pretended to be all surprised, and I said that I guessed I wouldn’t be buying it from her after all.”

  He laughed, recalling the jest he’d made. He’d probably laughed just that way then, too, though the joke was on him. “And that was the end of it. I kept coming out, doing chores, running errands, until she died. I tried to talk her into leaving my daughters something in her will, anything, just as a recognition that they exist. But she didn’t. And okay, I worked to get you to agree that everyone could choose one thing from the house, so my girls could have their own inheritance, and I could choose the boat. I just had to have that boat.” He stopped talking then and just stood there with his head down, shamed.

  “I understand,” said Susan. “Oh, Stew, what are we going to do with you?”

  “Well, you could give me the boat.” He lifted his head to reveal a roguish smile.

  “We can’t do that. Mr. Warner, here, says that under no circumstances should an amateur attempt to restore this boat, that it’s far too valuable to endanger it that way.”

  Stewart came closer. “You don’t know who you’re talking about, Mr. Warner. I’ve been around boats all my life. I think I know about as much as most professionals do about how to repair a boat, even a wooden one like this.”

  “Mr. O’Neil, this isn’t just a wooden boat, it’s made of African mahogany, which has special properties. You don’t just scrape the old finish off and slap on a new coat of varnish. It needs special handling to ensure it looks like it did when new. The seats are Spanish leather, expensive, and dyed a very particular shade of green. This is a grand old boat, a national treasure, and it needs careful restoration.”

  Betsy smiled to herself. Warner was speaking with deep feeling. It was obvious he’d already formed an attachment to the Edali and was hurt to think an amateur might fool around with it and perhaps damage it. But this was not her problem to solve—it was Susan’s.

  “Stew,” Susan said, “I’m sorry, I need to talk
to Jan about this. I’m in favor of taking the boat away from you, but I’m pretty sure Jan is going to argue that we agreed you could claim anything you wanted, so the boat should be yours. I’ll listen to her arguments—”

  Marcia spoke up. “If there is evidence of fraud in this arrangement, then as protector of the assets of the Hanraty estate, I’ll have something to say, as well. Mr. O’Neil, you have behaved, at the very least, very badly.”

  Again the shamed look, which Betsy thought not quite so well done as the first one. Perhaps sensing this, Stewart did not attempt to continue the discussion, but got into his rented vehicle and drove away.

  AT two the next day, Jan and Susan were sitting in Betsy’s apartment, looking wretched. “Oh, God, what if you’re wrong, Betsy?” asked Jan.

  “Then he will be acquitted at his trial,” she said. “But I don’t think I’m wrong. Neither does Sergeant Rice. Nor Mike Malloy.”

  “What made you sure?” asked Susan.

  “The boat. I should have looked into that boat earlier. Why did he want it? It would take time and money to fix it up, and it wouldn’t be suitable to take fishermen out in, so why did he want it so badly that he’d pass up things he could sell to get the money he needed to start his business?”

  Susan shook her head. “But to kill, to actually kill someone. I don’t understand. I thought I knew him, my own brother! What kind of person was he to do that?”

  “You told me yourself,” said Betsy. “You said he was ambitious, greedy, and lazy. He wanted to be an important businessman, but he wasn’t willing to devote the endless hours it takes. He was incensed that you and Jan were to inherit a million or more dollars—when you didn’t need it—while he, struggling and with four daughters to educate, got nothing. It wasn’t fair. He probably was working on changing Edyth’s mind when he discovered the Edali in the shed. Suddenly, he could see daylight. Oh, it would be nice to restore it and offer rides in it to select customers, but that notion only lasted until he found out that a restored Baby Gar was worth as much as a million dollars. That would even things up, if he could get a million just like his sister and niece!

  “But Todd Warner told him that it’s the restored Baby Gar that would be worth that kind of money—and that professional restoration of an antique boat would cost a great deal of money. Money he didn’t have.”

  Susan said in a low, angry voice, “That’s when he cooked up that deal with the girls, coaching them to choose very expensive items from the house so he could get the restoration money from them.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Betsy. “I think he genuinely thought he could do most of the restoration himself—he has an excellent opinion of his skills. By putting the girls forward as legitimate claimants, it made it possible for him to get the boat for nothing. But he really loves his daughters, Susan. That’s why he tried to murder Lucille.”

  “Lucille? I don’t understand.”

  “He was pretty sure he could talk Jan into loaning him some of the money she was to inherit. But she turned him down because she believed Lucille’s claim was legitimate, which might bring Jan’s share down to something even less than what he wanted to borrow. And he wanted to keep the boat.”

  “I never thought when I told him that…” said Jan, looking stricken. “Oh, no, I helped him decide that Lucille had to die!”

  “No such thing!” said Susan. “I won’t have you feeling guilty for something your uncle found out from you. He would have found out anyway.” She sniffed back a tear. “Poor Lucille, walking into a nest of vipers all unknowing.”

  “One viper,” corrected Betsy. “He was upset when his attempt on Lucille failed, but he still had Plan B, which was to tell Jan about the boat. If she loaned him just a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, she could have it back when he sold the restored Edali. He’d have enough left over to start his business.”

  “And fail,” said Susan.

  “Now, we don’t know that,” said Jan. “It really is a good idea, Mother. He loves to go fishing, and he knows every corner of Lake Minnetonka.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t like sitting in a cramped office doing sums and paying bills—and that’s a great big part of owning your own business.”

  “It sure is,” sighed Betsy, thinking of her poor, neglected shop.

  “Not that he’ll ever have a chance to find out,” muttered Susan, who was using anger to stave off grief.

  Jan looked at her watch. “Is it over yet?”

  Betsy looked at her own. “Probably. Both of you will very likely have messages on your phone machines when you get home.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” said Jan. “I couldn’t bear talking to him right now.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Susan. “When I thought the worst about Stew, I had no idea it wasn’t remotely the worst. How could he? How could he?”

  “DID he confess?” asked Betsy. She and Sergeant Rice were in a small conference room in the Excelsior Police Department building.

  “Not yet,” said Rice. “He’s made some damaging admissions, however. How did you find out about that boat?”

  “I got a call from Mr. Todd Warner, asking if I knew someone who knew something about restoring an old Persian carpet. I asked my finisher, and she told me Mr. Warner bought and sold antique boats. I called him back and asked him about Gar Wood, and when he found out I knew where the old Edali was, he was very eager to get a look at it. We managed to arrange that just before Stewart came by to pick it up—and discovered that Stewart had been talking to Mr. Warner about a Gar Wood boat last fall.”

  “I take it you didn’t suspect him until then.”

  “Oh, but I did. Stewart was very near the top of the people I thought might have murdered Edyth Hanraty—except he didn’t seem to have a motive. He wasn’t in line for any of the inheritance, nor were his daughters. That is, until I found out that a restored Baby Gar is worth a serious fortune.”

  “I don’t understand why you were looking at him at all,” said Rice.

  “A couple of things. He was among the people who didn’t know Edyth Hanraty put her hair into a braid before going to bed. Jan did, and so did Susan. It might have occurred to Lucille—it’s one of the things that turns up in women’s literature and in old movies. But probably not Bobby Lee. They knew about Edyth Hanraty and her relationship to Susan and Jan before they came up here, so they were at the top of my list.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Mike Malloy.

  “Because they couldn’t afford this trip as a mere vacation,” said Betsy. “Or even as a search for blood relatives. They are maxed out on their credit cards—I found that out from the owner of the cabin they’re staying in. She said they had to try three times to find a credit card that would cover the rent. And Lucille told me that Bobby Lee is just getting over a serious gambling problem. Lucille wanted to come up here to connect with her blood relatives, but Bobby Lee wouldn’t agree until he found out about Edyth Hanraty. If Lucille was a relative, maybe she was also an heir-in-waiting. If not, by making the connection now, while Edyth was still alive, she could work her way into the family and become one.

  “Then Jan told Lucille about Aunt Edyth’s peculiar will. If Lucille was Susan’s long-lost daughter, she was, in fact, in line for a fortune.”

  Malloy made a noise in his throat. “Yeah, Mitch told me about that and how Lucille could be an heir.”

  Betsy nodded. “And the sooner they got the money, the sooner they’d be out from under the crushing debt Bobby Lee piled up while his gambling was out of control. Since they had never met Edyth, they had no reason to see her as anything but a will in their favor waiting to be sent to probate.”

  “What about the murder weapon, the knitting needle?” asked Rice.

  “You can buy one in any store that sells knitting supplies. Bobby Lee had seen them in his house, Lucille had tried knitting with them. Worse, Lucille didn’t know where they’d gotten to. Oh, yes, I was pretty sure Bobby Lee was the kill
er. He told me with some relish how he used to pith frogs for Lucille when they were both in the same biology class. It was the same method used to murder poor Miss Hanraty. But Stewart knew how to pith a frog, too.”

  “So how do you think he did it? Snuck up on her getting ready for bed?”

  “No, she never would have allowed that—she locked her doors at night. He came over to do chores for her, just like he’d been doing for months, trying to get in her good graces. He probably made cocoa, or coffee, or got her to make some, and when she wasn’t looking, doctored it with sleeping pills. I know Susan has a supply of them. Jan told me about that when we showed Susan the doll we dredged up on the Big Island. Susan was extremely upset, poor thing, but Jan said she’d give her a pill. Stewart would have had any number of chances to steal a few, if he didn’t have any of his own.

  “Once Edyth was helpless, Stewart either killed her at the table, or got her into bed and killed her there. What I don’t understand is why he left the needle there to be found.”

  Rice said, “The medical examiner said she threw her head back when she died, pinching it in place. So he cut it off close, but not close enough, and it was discovered.”

  “I understand that’s typical of the man,” said Betsy. “He has great ideas but isn’t always good at carrying them out.”

  Rice said, “One thing I still need to check out is this DNA thing. I can’t help thinking that a couple of coincidences and a faked test would explain a whole lot about Lucille Jones.”

  “It’s authentic,” said Betsy. “Jan told me Susan submitted a blood sample. Maternity is harder to prove than paternity, and the father wasn’t able to provide a sample, so Jan did, too, since a full sibling is the next best thing. The test came back ninety-three point something probable that Susan is Lucille’s mother. As soon as Lucille is up for visitors, Susan is going to see her.”

  Twenty-five

  LUCILLE had been moved from Intensive Care to a semiprivate room. She looked, as she put it, “like I was dragged through a knothole backwards,” but managed a smile when she saw who was standing in the doorway.