The Drowning Spool

by Monica Ferris

  “Uh-oh.”

  Bershada nodded. “Yes, he was still on duty the morning the body in their therapy pool was discovered, and he’d been there since midnight. So they’re thinking he let her in. He’s saying he didn’t.”

  Betsy said, “Do they know what time she died? Could she have come in earlier, before midnight?”

  Bershada shook her head. “There was some kind of gathering of eight or nine people on that lower level outside the door to the gym, which didn’t break up until nearly one. The person who was on the desk before Ethan told him to keep an eye on them, so he did. He’s sure none of them looked like the drowned woman.”

  And the police surely contacted them, thought Betsy, to see if they remember someone going into the gym/pool area.

  Bershada continued, “Ethan says he didn’t let her in the main entrance, or see her come in with someone else. He’s a responsible young man, he pays attention to his job, he wasn’t lost in a book, or sleeping. Tired? Yes, that describes his life right now. But missing the arrival of an adult, coming right through the door? Not likely, not likely at all.”

  “I’m sure the police know that.”

  “That’s the problem: They don’t. They’ve decided that since she couldn’t have sneaked in, he must have let her in to swim. And that because she drowned, he’s scared and lying about it. The fact that he’s black and she’s white isn’t helping, especially with this one cop, a detective, who seems to think that Ethan and the girl had something going on and he drowned her on purpose.”

  “Why would Ethan do that?” Betsy asked.

  Bershada, without moving, seemed to back off a considerable distance. Her voice icy, she nevertheless answered, “This investigator seems to think that they had a quarrel. His theory is that, because Ethan is engaged to a young woman of his own race, perhaps this young white woman threatened to tell her they were having an affair and he thinks everyone knows that’s the world’s biggest no-no.”

  That shook Betsy into a proper frame of mind. “What wicked nonsense! I’ve only met Ethan twice, but he seems to me to be an intelligent fellow with his head screwed on right. He certainly doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would get himself in a mess like that. I can’t believe that investigator is serious.”

  “I’m afraid he is, and he’s in charge of this case.”

  “Ethan’s mother and father must be sick about this.”

  “They’re not sick. They’re furious. And so am I. Betsy, can you help us? I know you’re going to that place, Watered Silk, for exercise classes while the Courage Center pool is closed. Can you poke around and find out how that woman might have come into the pool without the man on the desk knowing about it?”

  “Oh, Bershada—” Betsy began.

  Bershada interrupted loudly. “You have to do it! The police think they know what happened! That it’s Ethan’s fault! They may even conclude that he’s a murderer! If we can’t find some other explanation, who knows what might happen to him? Please, Betsy!” Bershada’s hands were clenching and unclenching around her stitching bag, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. Bershada never begged, never wept.

  Betsy came out from behind the checkout desk and took her friend into her arms. “Here now, here now, it’s all right, everything is going to be all right. Of course I’ll look into it, I’m sure there must be some simple explanation.”

  She could feel the tension in Bershada’s shoulders relax. “Thank you,” Bershada said, stepping back. She looked Betsy in the eye and smiled tremulously. “I was being silly, you were going to offer to help even before I asked.”

  “Yes, of course I was. You were just so scared you didn’t give me a chance to say so.”

  “You’re a good friend.” Bershada turned away to find and put on her long gray coat, then fumbled in a pocket for a tissue. “Thank you, Betsy,” she said, “I just know you’ll find out what really happened.” Still wiping her eyes, she went out the door.

  • • •

  ON Wednesday, Betsy went early to her water aerobics class. She lingered at the front desk after signing in. Now she looked more closely at the handsome black man manning it, and recognized him as Ethan. He frowned a little at her regard before realizing who she might be. “Hey, are you Ms. Devonshire? Did my aunt talk to you?”

  “Yes.” Betsy nodded. “I’m going to try to find out what really happened.”

  “You don’t know how hard I’m wishing you luck.” He spoke slowly, his forehead puckered with intensity.

  “Thanks. I hope I don’t disappoint you. So first, tell me about your job in this place.”

  “It’s just part-time, four nights a week, midnight to eight. I found out about it from a listing on campus. I’ve been here almost eight months. It’s a good job, no stress, no hassles, time to study. I man this desk and I do a regular little six-minute tour of the downstairs every hour.” He held up his wrist. “They gave me this watch to wear on duty. It has an alarm that goes off at hourly intervals, reminding me to make my tour. So far, no complaints, from me or them. Until now, of course.” He grimaced angrily, thumped his fist on the desk, then drew a calming breath. “Anything else I can tell you?” he asked.

  “What do you know about the building?” Betsy asked. “How many entrances are there?”

  “Five.”

  Betsy was surprised. “Five?”

  He nodded. “Including the front door, five. They are all always locked but the residents have an electronic key that will open any of them, day or night. You’ve probably seen the key; it looks like an outsize credit card and you press it up against a white rectangle beside any one of the doors to unlock it.”

  Betsy nodded; every student in her needlework class here wore one around her neck. “What else by way of security?”

  “There are nine cameras in the building, one at each of the doors, one at the entrance to the locked ward, two in the main downstairs hallways, and one in the kitchen.”

  He gestured at a big-screen TV at one end of his long desk. It was divided into nine subscreens, and as Betsy watched, one of them grew a white spot just as someone entered the main entrance vestibule. The spot disappeared and Betsy recognized Rita and turned to wave at her. Ethan pressed a button and the door clacked sharply and slid open.

  “Hi, Betsy,” Rita said. She carried a zippered bag in one hand, and came to the desk to sign in.

  “Hi, Rita. You go on down, I need to talk to this gentleman here for a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  Betsy waited until Rita was out of earshot, then asked, “Did that white dot mean a person was coming into camera view?”

  “It means the motion detector went off. If someone hiding behind a corner rolls a ball down the hall, the white dot appears.”

  Betsy smiled. “Let me guess: Wilma Carter.”

  Ethan smiled back. “You got it. That lady has a wacky sense of humor. Plus, she turns up everywhere, and I think she sleeps less than I do.”

  “Do you ever miss that white dot alarm?”

  “I did at first, but I rarely miss it now.”

  “But still, you do miss it sometimes. And suppose it goes off when you’re making a tour?”

  “Well, okay, it could light up while I’m away. But like I said, those little rounds last six minutes, max. And if someone comes in, the only way to the pool is past this desk.”

  “There’s an elevator at the bottom of the stairs,” Betsy pointed out.

  “Yes, from an upper floor inside the building. You’d have to get in, go to an upper floor, and come down on the elevator. Which has a nice loud ping, which I didn’t hear that morning. Apart from everything else, the person doing that would have to be familiar with the building—and the drowned woman was a stranger. Nobody here can identify her.”

  Betsy nodded. “I see. So while it’s not impossible, it’s unlikely that some stranger could get in without your knowing it.”

  “Sure. And one other important thing: The door to the pool itself is l
ocked, and with a for-real metal key. I think maybe four people have one. That door is only open when a staff member is in there.”

  “Is there a key here at the desk?”

  “No. The two water therapists each have one, the head of maintenance has one, and the building manager has the fourth. None of them ever comes in at night.”

  “I see. Well, thanks, Ethan. Your Aunt Bershada has given me a hard puzzle to solve.”

  Ethan’s face again twisted with anxiety. “It’s a damned important puzzle. There has to be a solution that doesn’t call for me to get arrested!”

  Four

  THE next day, Thursday, Betsy came in early for the punch needle class. Even though she had called ahead, she didn’t see Thistle waiting for her, so she went for a close look at the framed piece of art.

  It wasn’t a painting but a piece of fabric, a pure red, with vertical bands in paler red, each marked as if many women with differently shaped lips had kissed the fabric. Betsy had seen fabric with these markings before, called moire, but she hadn’t realized it was the same as watered silk. The piece was perhaps fifteen inches wide by twelve inches high.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” Thistle remarked from behind her.

  “How did they get that effect?” Betsy asked, after an initial start—she hadn’t heard the tall redhead’s approach.

  “My understanding is that they ran the silk between very heavy rollers, and that pretty result is actually damage to the fabric. It was popular among the wealthy starting around two hundred years ago because watered silk was fragile and expensive.” She smiled. “Sort of like the people who live in this complex today.”

  Betsy smiled. “Good simile. Or do I mean metaphor?” She shrugged off her own question. “And they used to make watered silk in this building?”

  “Yes, though this wasn’t the only kind of silk they wove here. The factory was in operation from 1887 until 1935. They did a couple of remodels, I don’t remember which years they were, but somewhere in there, the piece you see here—which was about a yard long when it was found, split, stained, and dirty—got laid down under a floor. They saved the best part of it, and there it is.”

  Betsy took another look at the textile fragment. Even under glass, the fabric shimmered as if brushed by a delicate breeze. It was surrounded by a double mat in cream and ivory, and the broad and deeply carved wooden frame surrounding it looked like a real antique, its gold leaf flaked off here and there. Betsy could see how the people who built this place would appreciate the layers of meaning in the name Watered Silk. She turned around. “Let’s go up to the library. I want to see the book of photographs Wilma Carter published.”

  “Right this way.”

  Betsy paid attention to the route they took, so she wouldn’t always be dependent on Thistle to lead her to and from the lobby.

  There were already three women in the library, punching away on their projects. Two of them looked up and nodded; the third was too deeply focused on her work to notice them.

  Betsy walked over to the small table beside the fireplace. The book, which took up most of the surface of the small table, had a cover featuring a springtime meadow, fresh green grass poking up through the bent brown grass of the previous summer, with the edge of a forest in the background. Minnesota’s Secret Wildlife was its title, with Wilma’s name in smaller type in the bottom right-hand corner. Betsy sat down and put the book in her lap. Remembering what she’d been told, she spent about thirty seconds searching the dust jacket before she saw the pair of wild rabbits crouching in the mix of grass near the bottom center of the photo.

  Thistle, standing beside her, gave her a few more seconds, then silently touched a place where the forest edge was marked with underbrush, and then Betsy saw the reason for the rabbits’ flat-eared crouch: A wolf, head lifted as if he’d caught their scent, was studying the meadow with yellow eyes. His shaggy brown-gray coat made him almost invisible beside the bushes.

  “This is wonderful!” murmured Betsy. She opened the book and quickly became absorbed in searching the photos for more examples of deer, beavers, turtles, and other animals cleverly hidden among underbrush, tall grass, evergreens, even in a tree-shaded pond.

  “Ur-rmmm!” sounded a woman’s voice softly. Betsy looked up to find all the members of her class present and waiting for her. She looked at her watch—she was five minutes late.

  “Sorry!” she exclaimed, closing the book and putting it down on the table. “Welcome back. Have you all been working on the practice piece? Let’s take a look.” As Thistle had predicted, Wilma Carter wasn’t present. The others had nearly completed their homework, and the results were all satisfactory. Even one that was barely half done was done very competently. The class was going splendidly. Life was good.

  “Okay, you’re clearly ready for a more complex piece,” Betsy said. She handed out squares of thin, tightly-woven tailor’s cloth printed with a simple outline drawing of a baby chick standing among four eggs. She placed on the table a great gleaming heap of DMC floss in lots of colors: three shades of pink, two of deep gold, three shades of green, two of yellow-green, two of blue-green, two maroons, a clear yellow, a light, medium, and dark blue, four shades of lavender, and so on, mostly pastels—these were Easter eggs, after all—many skeins of each color. There were exclamations of wonder and delight.

  “You can take a pencil and draw patterns on the eggs, or you can make them solid colors,” she said.

  “Before we begin,” said Estelle, the thin woman. She hesitated, then continued, a little shamefacedly, “I have to confess that I’ve lost my threader. I’ve been borrowing Nancy’s, but can I buy just a threader from your shop?”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Betsy, “The shop carries a supply of them. They come four to a set. I’ll donate this set to the class, so anyone who needs a replacement—up to four of you—can have one.” She brought out a clear glass tube with four of the nearly invisible threaders in it. “Or, you can buy a tube of four for yourself.”

  “I need one, too,” said Vivian, smiling in relief that she was not alone in having lost the implement.

  “I’d better buy a tube,” said Estelle.

  “Fine, I’ll bring you one next time.”

  The stitchers were busy drawing stars and curves on their fabric egg shapes when Betsy heard the familiar cry, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, start over!”

  She looked up to see Wilma Carter hustling to a place at the table, a mischievous smile on her wrinkled face. Her lap stand was in one hand, and in the other she held a sewing bag made of a carpet remnant. She dropped the bag on the floor, then pulled a chair out and sat down heavily, scooting her lap stand out in front of her on the table. A glance at it showed her practice piece was nearly completed, albeit riddled with lots of cross-the-outline errors and gaps. “I ran out of floss,” she announced. “Otherwise it would be done.”

  “I can see you understand the technique,” said Betsy kindly.

  “It takes a lot of patience,” said Wilma, “and I’m not so patient as I used to be.”

  “You must have been extraordinarily patient to have captured those photographs of wild animals for your wonderful book.”

  “What book?”

  Wordlessly, Betsy turned in her chair and pointed to the coffee-table-size book.

  Wilma said, “They tell me that book over there has pictures in it I took, but I used to take pictures of people. They weren’t wild animals.” She chuckled. “Most of them weren’t, anyway.”

  “That book is wonderful, sort of a Where’s Waldo?, only with animals,” said the plumpest of Betsy’s students, Mildred.

  “Where’s Waldo?” asked Wilma, turning to stare at her. “Where is Waldo? Do you know?” Her face had gone blank and she seemed confused. “Who are you?” she asked Betsy, her voice frightened. “I don’t know who you are!”

  “I’m Betsy Devonshire, and I’m here to teach a class on punch needle.”

  “I don’t know you, I don’t know w
hat you want! I don’t want to be here! I need to go to my room!” Wilma’s eyes were wide, her voice high-pitched.

  “You’re fine, I’m here with you, I can take you to your room,” said Thistle, coming to put her hands on Wilma’s shoulders. “You’re all right, there’s no need to be frightened. I’ll take care of you. You know me, I’m Thistle.”

  Wilma looked up, then gave a nervous laugh. “That’s a funny name. But wait, yes, I remember you with the funny name. You teach us things.”

  Thistle laughed softly. “Yes, that’s right.” She helped Wilma to her feet and, leaving her needlework behind, led her from the room, one arm tucked companionably into Wilma’s, talking quietly to her.

  There fell a nervous silence.

  Betsy said, “She’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

  “Of course she will!” said Fran, with emphasis. “She just had a little lapse, it could happen to anyone.”

  “No, it couldn’t, not like what just happened,” said Estelle. “She’s ill, she’s got a deadly sickness. Let’s not pretend she’s going to be all right. Please; God, don’t let it happen to me.”

  “Amen,” said two other women quietly.

  “Now, where were we?” said Betsy, reclaiming their attention to the task at hand. “When you’re coming close to the border on your pattern, don’t put a stitch directly on the border if you’re going to outline it in another color. Now, look at your punch needle. You’ll see that the narrow red sleeve on the silver needle is actually in three segments. If you pull one off, that will raise the nap on the front of your pattern. Pull two off, and it’s even higher. You might want to make your chick stand out from the eggs by making the nap higher on him. But be sure to put the little segments back into the glass tube you store your punch needle and threader in, so you don’t lose them. And be careful pulling them off and even more so putting them back on, as the point of your needle is really sharp.”