The Drowning Spool

by Monica Ferris

  “Maybe he fell across an article while surfing the net,” argued Malloy, but not as if he believed it.

  “You really like him for this, don’t you?” said Betsy.

  “He’s what I’d call my least objectionable suspect. I’ll tell you something else: He had scratches on his forearms when I first talked to him. He said a goat did it, but I’m thinking of a struggling woman being shoved under soapy water. Neither one of the other two suspects had any marks like that.”

  “Oh, wow. Oh, wow,” breathed Betsy.

  “I’m this close”—Malloy held up his right hand, finger and thumb a half inch apart—“to arresting him. Don’t you think I should?”

  “I don’t know. Knowing Tommy works at a drugstore, I do think he looks more likely than the others. But how can we link him to Wilma Carter? He doesn’t know anyone at Watered Silk, so what was he doing visiting the place? Whereas Preston has a—what? A great-aunt? A great-aunt who is Wilma, for cripes’ sake!”

  “But his wife says he was at home, with her.”

  “She loves him, she may be lying for him.”

  “Humph, I suppose so. But I’m damned if I’d lie for a spouse who’s been lying to me for years about infidelities.”

  “Not to mention that little old vasectomy,” added Connor.

  “Did you tell her about it?” Betsy asked Malloy.

  He shook his head. “Not relevant.”

  “He is not a nice man,” said Betsy. “And if I had to judge by likability, he’d be my murderer. But where would he get atropine? And a hypodermic needle? And the knowledge to put it in that little patch?” She frowned. “Where are those patches kept? Surely not in Wilma’s room.”

  “Actually, they were. Residents’ medicines are kept in wooden cabinets about sixteen inches wide by twenty inches tall, fastened fairly high up on the wall. They’re locked, of course. The nurse on duty has the key.”

  “And the keys are kept—?”

  “Key. One key unlocks any of the cabinets. A second copy is kept in the little pharmacy at Watered Silk—which is itself under lock and key. But the locks on the cabinets are fairly flimsy. They’re meant to keep the residents out, not to foil a determined burglar.”

  “Did any of our trio know anything about this?”

  “No. I checked the records, and Preston visited his great-aunt-by-marriage only once, eighteen months ago, in the company of his wife and father-in-law. Thereafter, his wife did the visiting, about once a month, sometimes along with her father.”

  “Typical,” remarked Betsy.

  “Now, machree,” Connor said gently.

  Malloy continued, “Tommy never visited the complex, except to swim in the pool, which he now says he did twice. He says Teddi brought him both times, and he claims he doesn’t know how she found out about it.”

  “And Noah?”

  “Now here’s one big black mark against Noah Levesque: He’s an insulin-dependent diabetic, so he has access to hypodermic needles and knows how to use them. And here’s another black mark against him: He worked at Watered Silk, helping to build a bistro in the complex. But that was before they installed the therapy pool, which he did not work on. And, he says he never went skinny-dipping over there. He knew about it—he says Teddi told him—but he also says he told her he outgrew skinny-dipping when he turned twenty-five.”

  “He’s lying,” said Betsy.

  “What? About what?”

  “I got him to agree to talk to me by telling him I had an eyewitness to his using the pool. He identified Wilma as ‘that crazy old lady’ whose testimony was not to be believed. But I described the route she showed me through the alley door, up the stairs into the maintenance closet and through the men’s locker room. Then he admitted he’d used the pool several times.”

  “Son of a bitch!” said Malloy, making a note. “I better have another talk with that fellow. I wonder why he changed his story when talking to me.”

  “Because somehow he found out that Wilma is dead. And he assumed that the eyewitness I scared him with—who, by the way, never mentioned him by name or identified him by description—is gone. And he knows I’m not connected officially with the police, so he concludes that you and I never talk.”

  Malloy said, “Poor ignorant bastard,” and wrote something else in his notebook.

  Betsy said, “Have you talked to the former head of maintenance at Watered Silk?”

  “Why should I talk to him?”

  “Because he’s a smoker, and his office down in that basement was far away from the official exit where smokers can stand outside and puff away.”

  “So?”

  “So there’s this great big door a few steps away from his desk that leads out into an obscure alley where a man can indulge his nicotine addiction quickly and safely, once he makes a few adjustments to the blockade on it. If you go look some more, you’ll find a few stray cigarette butts in the alley near that door.”

  Malloy looked at Betsy for a few seconds while he thought about it. Then he turned to a blank space in his book and wrote something else down. Finally he looked up at Betsy, waiting.

  “His name is Paul Juggins, and he lives in Hopkins,” she said.

  Connor looked fit to burst with amused pride.

  In the car on the drive home, Connor burst into song: “She’s a lassie from Devonshire, just a lassie from Devonshire, she’s a lassie I love so dear, oh, so dear!”

  “I believe the original lassie was from Lancashire,” said Betsy, laughing. After a moment’s thought, she launched into a new version of another old song: “Has anybody here seen Connor? S-U-L-L-I-V-A-N, has anybody here seen Connor? Find him if you can! For he came to me from ’cross the sea, tender as a man can be. Has anybody here seen Connor? Connor from Ireland!”

  “Oh, my dear, that’s good!” said Connor.

  • • •

  BY the time they got home, their joyous mood was all spent, and they came up the stairs to the apartment quiet and thoughtful.

  “I liked Noah,” said Betsy, rinsing and filling Sophie’s water dish before putting it on the floor for her. Thai beat her to it, though, and straddled it with his forepaws so Sophie couldn’t get at it. Connor gently lifted the Siamese and tickled him under his chin. The animal reached up to lightly touch Connor’s face, purring. Sophie meanwhile came to drink. “He was charming and seemed like a grown-up,” Betsy continued. “I’m disappointed that he’s proved a liar.”

  “He’s scared. They’re all scared, I suspect. One of them is going to be tried for murder, and each is hoping it’s one of the others.”

  “And they’re all lying.”

  “You don’t know Pres is lying; you haven’t talked to him.”

  “He’s been false to his wedding vows, and he lied to his wife about his vasectomy. I cannot believe he wouldn’t lie to me.”

  Connor put Thai down. “Do you think he really lied about his vasectomy? Maybe the person lying is Sony. Maybe she’s insisting online that she wants another child, knowing she’s not going to get one from him, turning wishful thinking into some kind of weird game.”

  Betsy frowned at him, then went into the living room to think. She sat down in the chair she used when knitting. Knitting was her way of clearing away the distractions in her mind so she could work things out. “I don’t know,” she said to herself, turning over his comments in her head. Sony’s fury at Betsy during that one encounter certainly gave rise to a theory of an unbalanced personality.

  Hmm . . .

  Connor, knowing what she was about to do, joined her and got out his own project. It was a counted cross-stitch sampler pattern, done all in blue on linen, of old-fashioned sailing ships, mermaids, anchors, rays, starfish, dolphins, and more maritime-themed items scattered down the cloth, with a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin’s back, uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, that the rude sea grew civil at her song; and certain stars shot madly from their spheres to hear the sea-m
aid’s music.” The pattern was by Stickideen von der Wiehenburg; Betsy had found it at a needlework market last year.

  They had purchased a second good lamp to match the one Betsy had placed behind her chair. This new one stood beside the couch, where it cast a good strong light over Connor’s shoulder when he sat there. They both snapped on their lights and fell into a companionable silence.

  Betsy reached into the carpetbag hanging suspended in its little wooden frame beside her and pulled out the knit scarf she was working on. It was an experimental piece, using roving instead of yarn. Betsy sold roving down in her shop—a length of wool that has been cleaned and carded so the fibers all face in one direction. People who like to spin their own yarn but not go through the lengthy preparation process buy roving, as do people who do needle felting. But a woman who sold wool at craft fairs told Betsy it is also possible to knit or even crochet with it. So Betsy had bought a single ball of roving that came from a black sheep and was trying to knit a skinny scarf from it.

  The roving was somewhat flat, but about an inch wide, far wider than any yarn she had ever used. It was not as solid as a strand of yarn—with little effort it would pull apart—so she had to handle it gently. The scarf she was creating from it was thicker than usual, but so narrow it was nearly round. As she gained experience of its properties, she was surprised to find it wasn’t all that difficult to work with. As a bonus, there were subtle shifts in the natural black color, even here and there a fine strand of brown. She had a dark brown sweater that would go nicely with this scarf.

  As she settled into the knitting, she felt the usual calming and clearing of her mind. However, because roving was new to her, she had to keep some of her attention on the soft, fragile material in her fingers.

  And, because this was a learning experience, she wasn’t doing anything but straight knit stitches, using size thirteen needles, and easing the roving onto and off them. Her scarf was just ten stitches wide and so far just a little over four inches long.

  Push through the last loop, lay the roving over the end of the needle, gently twist to catch it with the needle and pull it through, then slip the loop off.

  Which of the three suspects knew Wilma’s name? Noah thought he knew that she’d seen him in the pool, but that was a fact not in evidence. All Betsy knew was that Wilma knew how people were sneaking into the complex without going through one of the camera-guarded entrances. When she told Noah how it was done, he’d been convinced that Wilma had seen him there.

  No, wait a second. Noah had described Wilma as a crazy old lady—how did he know that unless he had encountered her? Had she walked into the pool via that back entrance and accosted him? Who was there with him? Skinny-dipping is not usually a solitary activity.

  What else did Noah know about her? Her name? The number of her apartment? That she had a fresh Exelon patch applied to her back every evening? That he might know that last bit of information was impossible to believe—but her murderer knew.

  Pres might know. Wilma was a relative by marriage. And his wife visited her at Watered Silk. Sony could easily have kept him aware of Wilma’s status at the senior center.

  And what about Sony? She had a temper and was not afraid to display it. Betsy could see her attacking Teddi . . . maybe. It seemed more likely she would go after Pres. And would she be willing to murder her own great-aunt, whom she knew well? And why? Did Wilma see her—or one of the men, or some other person—sneaking Teddi’s body into Watered Silk to float it in the pool?

  Hold on, that would mean Sony knew about Teddi—knew where she lived, in fact. And she could have gone over there to surprise her in her bath and drown her.

  Betsy smiled. That seemed awfully unlikely. Pres was extremely careful about keeping his women from his wife.

  So let’s look at Tommy.

  Poor ineffectual Tommy. Who was living hand to mouth, working two low-paying jobs, and couldn’t even afford child support if he’d fathered a child. “What was I supposed to do?” he had whined to Betsy over a burger and fries. If Teddi had not wanted to abort her baby, Tommy was going to be stuck taking care of it for the next eighteen years. Probably he could see himself in court in a few years, convicted of being tens of thousands of dollars behind in support. He knew where she lived, he’d been in her house.

  So had Noah, the lying liar. No, Tommy was a lying liar, Noah was a calculating liar, thinking Betsy and Malloy would never talk to each other. He’d assumed it was safe, once Wilma was dead, to deny to Malloy ever going swimming at Watered Silk. It was not impossible that he’d encountered the perpetually peripatetic Wilma while working on the bistro. And Noah knew how to wield a hypodermic needle, too. But did he know which room Wilma was in? Or that she used Exelon? And where would he get the atropine?

  Where would any of them get the atropine?

  Atropine. Wasn’t it derived from belladonna, a plant? And called belladonna because it dilates the eyes, which makes a person look more beautiful? So how can it be a poison?

  She put her knitting away.

  “Time for bed?” Connor asked.

  “In a little while,” she replied. “I need to look something up.”

  She went into the second bedroom that was her office and booted up her computer.

  A keyword search gave her lots of information. Atropine, in small or diluted doses, was perfectly safe. It had many medical uses: It could treat diverticulitis, spastic colon, certain heart problems, even infant colic. A doctor could easily write a prescription for a patient and it could be had from a drugstore.

  It was also used in surgery, because in bigger doses it paralyzed the muscles and allowed a surgeon to cut or move through them. But by paralyzing the muscles, it required that a patient be given artificial aid to breathe, and there was danger the heart would stop.

  None of her suspects had ever worked as a surgeon or even a surgical nurse or hospital pharmacist.

  Except Sony, who was in bed asleep next to her husband, the lying fink, the night Teddi was drowned.

  Rats. As Godwin said, quoting Mark Twain, it was “too many” for her.

  She shut down the computer and went into their bedroom.

  Twenty

  BETSY found Connor reading in bed—he liked spy novels and was deep into a worn paperback copy of The Miernik Dossier. “I’ve seen you reading that one before,” she said, starting to undress. “Why do you like it?”

  “It’s a collection of documents,” he replied, closing the book on his thumb to mark his place. “You have to figure out the story yourself, rather than having the author tell it to you. Kind of like the detecting you do: You gather the stories and information, and from it you come to a conclusion that fits all the facts. It’s fascinating watching you at work.”

  She sat on the bed to take off her shoes. “It’s not quite so much fun from inside my own head. I frankly don’t know where to look next. I have different reasons for liking each of the suspects—and different reasons for thinking they’re innocent, too.” She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t like any of them for this, actually.”

  “So who is most likely?” he asked.

  She sighed. “Tommy. Well, that is, Tommy for Wilma, and Pres for Teddi. Or maybe Noah for Wilma.”

  “Could it be there are two murderers?”

  She considered that. “Oh, now you’ve complicated it even more!” She went to brush her teeth.

  Later, asleep, she had a dream. A dolphin—colored an improbable pink—was leaping out of a dark, stormy sea, making a series of leaps, each exactly like the previous one, while whitecaps flung themselves high, breaking into a lace-like pattern at their tops, over and over and over. In her dream, she was at first fascinated by the precision of the leaps and the beauty of the whitecaps, then bored by the endless parade until a piece of classical music started to play. By then the dolphin wasn’t leaping in time to the music, and then it was the clock radio playing something by Mozart and it was time to wake up.

  Whew!


  Connor began to stir, so she quickly shut off the radio and slipped out of bed. It was her morning for water aerobics at the Courage Center in Golden Valley. She made a quick trip to the bathroom to brush her teeth again, step into her dark blue swimsuit—the one resistant to chlorine—and dress in jeans and a sweater. She grabbed her zippered bag containing underwear, deodorant, a comb, socks, and a washcloth; rolled a towel on top; and went down the stairs to the back hallway that led to the small parking lot in back of her building. It was still dark out, the temperature well below freezing but not bitter cold. The sky was overcast, but it didn’t feel like snow, and the roads leading eastward toward the Courage Center were clear.

  Getting a bit of exercise three mornings a week had become a longtime habit, and one not difficult to maintain, as it happened so early in the morning that it didn’t put a hole in her day.

  She found her friends in the women’s locker room chatting about travel, past and planned, but she had nothing to contribute. The women took quick showers and went into the brightly lit great room, where an Olympic-size pool waited, its surface smooth. Music set to a disco beat started, and their instructor came out of a side office, as the six women and three men stepped down into the delicious warmth.

  Toward the end of the one-hour class, a new move was introduced. Everyone went to the side of the pool to do leg flutters and to step with alternating feet onto the vertical edge of the pool, and then were asked to pull themselves up by their hands out of the water, drop back down, and repeat. Whoosh, drop down, whoosh, drop down.

  Betsy was thinking about Noah, Tommy, and Pres, and forgot to coordinate her movements and her breathing. She tried to take a breath while dropping back down so far that half her face was underwater.

  One instant she felt water rushing up her nose and seemingly the next she was lying on her side on the pool’s apron, trying to cough up a lung.

  “That’s it, that’s it, breathe, Betsy, breathe!” Emily was saying, patting her on the back.