Blackwork (18 page)

Betsy said, “You said yourself Ryan was an ugly drunk. Maybe he hurt someone badly while he was drunk, or threatened to do violence to someone. It could even have been just words. You know, blackmail. He was a friend of yours—had he been boasting about hurting someone in some way?”

Harvey checked his watch and got to his feet in one swift motion. “Not that I can recall. What does it matter? Whatever the threat, it’s not there anymore. It’s all over, done and over.” He knocked the dottle out of his pipe on the edge of the table, ground it into the cement floor with a heavy boot, and put the pipe back in its pocket. “I’ve got to get back to work. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

He walked away, leaving Betsy to stare thoughtfully after him.

I
’M
serious
! I would have
died
right there at the party if they hadn’t found me in another
minute
!” Godwin alternated between fear and amusement as he told his story to the Monday Bunch.

“You mean to tell us,” said Bershada in a doubtful voice, “that that foggy stuff you make with dry ice and water is
poisonous
?” She and three others were sitting at the library table on Monday afternoon. Turnout for the regular meeting of stitchers was thin because there was a very noisy thunder-storm going on outside.

“No-o-o,” drawled Godwin. “That is, not exactly. You can breathe it like air, but it doesn’t work like air. Your lungs can’t get any oxygen out of it. And it gives you a huge headache. I actually thought someone hit me.” He touched a place on the back of his head. “Right here.”

“I’ve heard of that,” said Emily, surprising them. When they looked at her, she blushed and said, “You know, you sit in your car in the garage with the door down, and it can kill you.”

“Honey, that’s carbon
mon
oxide. Dry ice is carbon
di
oxide.”

“That’s right,” said tall, blond Jill, who had not only come out in such frightful weather, but had brought little Erik along. He lay asleep in his carrier on the floor beside her feet. He had slept on the way over, too. Erik could sleep through loud noises so tranquilly his mother at one time thought he might be deaf.

She continued, “Carbon monoxide replaces the oxygen in the blood, so the victim’s dark venous blood turns bright red, as he suffocates at a cellular level.”

“Jill, honestly—” began Betsy, never a fan of gory details.

“All right, but it’s not the same as carbon dioxide poisoning, which is basically suffocation. Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide. It’s heavier than air, and that’s why the vapors you make by putting it in water flow across the floor. It’s not dangerous unless you fill a whole room with it, which is hard to do because you’d need a practically air-tight room to do that.”

“Or unless you put your face right down into it,” amended Godwin.

“Or unless,” agreed Jill placidly. “Which I don’t imagine you’ll do again.”

“Wedding plans all finished?” asked Alice, trying to change the subject. She had had enough of the dangers of frozen carbon dioxide. Mere rain couldn’t keep Alice away from the Monday Bunch’s regular meetings. Though elderly, she was almost impervious to weather. “I’m not made of sugar,” she was inclined to say. “I won’t melt in the rain.” She loved weddings, and attended many, but she was shy, always sat in the back, and left as soon as the ceremony was over.

“We’re ready,” said Godwin, as if speaking of a coming battle. A growl of thunder punctuated his words. Godwin looked at Betsy and asked accusingly, “Have you got the rings?” As Best Woman, that was one of Betsy’s responsibilities.

“Not on me!” protested Betsy, afraid he was going ask her to produce them. “But I’ve put them in the purse I’m going to carry.”

“You’re not carrying a
purse
!” exclaimed Godwin.

“Of course I am, my dress doesn’t have a pocket. It’s just a tiny thing, it hangs from my wrist by a thin silver chain. It’s all right, I can have one. You’re the one who has to hold the bride’s bouquet while she takes her vows.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right.” Godwin began to look dreamy and the women looked at one another and smiled.

“What time do you want us at the church tomorrow?” asked Emily. “The service is at ten, right?”

“Yes. Don’t come before nine-forty, please. There are only going to be about twenty of us gathered.”

It had started out to be a half dozen, but quickly grew to a dozen, and now was up to twenty-two. Any more and the service would have to be moved from the tiny stone chapel that was Excelsior’s oldest church to the big church on the other side of the church hall.

If Phil and Doris had had their way, it would have been four people gathered in Father Rettger’s study for three or four minutes followed by lunch at Antiquity Rose.

Instead, under Godwin’s prodding, there was to be a complete marriage service down to the throwing of the bouquet outside on the steps. Godwin was inclined to weep with sentiment when he thought about it.

Alice said, “I was hoping Phil and Doris would be here today. I have something for her, something she should have before the wedding.” She bent sideways and lifted her big old sewing bag onto the table. From it she pulled a white box about eighteen inches long by a foot wide and not quite three inches deep. It was tied with a pale blue silk ribbon.

“Oh, Alice, can we see it?” cried Godwin, coming around the table to look at the box. “Please, please? What is it?”

She turned her bluff old face to him, prepared to say no, so he shifted tactics. “Is it for the wedding? It is, isn’t it? Because you want her to have it now. Well, I’m the wedding coordinator, I’m making all the arrangements, so I just have to see it.” He sat down beside her and put a tentative hand on the box. “Please?”

She studied him briefly, while he put on his most beguiling face.

“Oh, you,” she said. She pulled at the bow and it came open. She lifted the lid to expose a layer of tissue paper, which she parted with large, gentle hands. Inside was a layer of lace. Two layers. No, three.

Betsy came for a look. “What is it?” she asked. “Oh, Alice, it’s bobbin lace!” Years ago Alice had been a well-known maker of gorgeous bobbin lace. She’d had to give it up when her eyes got too old to see the tiny pattern of knots.

“Yes, it’s from my collection. I put together ten lengths of it to make this.” She held it up. It was a mantilla or head-scarf, a gossamer thing of pale ecru, fifteen inches wide and almost fifty inches long. It was made in inch-and-a-half-wide stripes, with tiny hearts in the central band that ran the length of the thing.

“Wow!” said Godwin, testing its near-nothing heft with both hands, turning and twisting and bending to look at it from all angles.

“Ohhhhhh,” breathed Betsy, coming to touch the thing very gently with a forefinger. “Perfect, this will be the perfect something borrowed.”

“More likely the something old,” said Godwin. “Could something for the bride be old and borrowed both?”

“Only old,” said Alice. “It’s a gift.”

“Alice, do you mean that?” asked Betsy.

“I can’t believe you want to part with something that lovely,” said Jill.

“But I do,” said Alice. “Doris has been a good friend to me, and what else am I to do with things like this? I have no family to leave my lace to. And I certainly can’t wear something like this.” She smiled. “I can just see it over that red hair of hers, though. Won’t it be lovely?”

Godwin threw his arms around her. “You are the
best
, the very
best
!”

Emily said, “But will it go with what she’s wearing? Goddy, you’ve been keeping her wedding dress a big secret, so will this look okay?”

“It will look
fabulous
.” He could no longer forbear talking about it and said all in a rush, “She’s going to be wearing a cream wool suit, with tan shoes. Betsy and I are going to wear navy, and Phil will wear his good brown pinstripe—it’s in the same color stream as Doris’s cream colors. This ecru mantilla will set the whole thing off just beautifully.”

Jill said, “Alice, I can’t believe you’re giving this away. It is simply breathtaking. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want it back?”

“I agree it came out very nice, but the newest pieces have been sitting in my cedar chest for at least a dozen years. I have more pieces than these, so it’s not as if I’m giving it all away. It was fun choosing the lace that could make something nice for my friend. Bobbin lace looks fragile, but this probably will outlast everyone in the room—even little Erik down there, so sound asleep, the little sweetheart. It’s nice to have my lace out of storage, to know it will have its day in the sun.” Alice’s voice was soft, the expression on her weathered face kind and happy.

“Thank you for saying that!” said Godwin. “Now the sun just has to shine!”

“I think it’s wonderful of you to do this,” said Betsy. “I’m sure Doris will be pleased to have it. Who gets to take it to her, me or Goddy?”

“Why, I do, of course,” said Alice, folding it very carefully back into the tissue paper and laying it gently back in the box. “I’ll tell her that her marriage coordinator approves of her wearing it, all right?”

She suited action to words, rising to put on an ancient pair of rubbers, a voluminous raincoat, and taking up a big old bumbershoot before heading out into the storm.

Jill said, “A grand old lady, isn’t she?”

Emily said, “Goddy, what else went on at that party you went to?”

The women went back to their stitching while Godwin beguiled them with stories of the great food and drink, the wonderful recitations. He made them shiver with his, “The candle’s out this night and all.”

“The candle’s out,” repeated Jill, storing the image away in her sometimes-depressive Scandinavian mind. Betsy was reminded that in medieval symbology, a snuffed candle represented the newly deceased. She frowned over that thought— was it significant?—but then Godwin went merrily into a description of Miss Bailey’s request for a bribe for the sexton so she could have a proper burial.

Betsy surprised Godwin by knowing the sad reason for the unfortunate ghost’s need. “Suicides couldn’t be buried in the sacred ground of a cemetery, as they were considered damned souls,” she said. “I remember looking it up after the Kingston Trio sang it in a concert I went to.” She sang in a falsetto voice, “‘Bless you, wicked Captain Smith, remember poor Miss Bailey!’”

The door made its two-note announcement of a customer coming in, and Betsy went to serve her—it was Shelly, who must have come directly from the classroom. “I need some new needles, Betsy,” she said. “Most of my old ones have rust spots on them.”

“Oh, that’s too bad! How did it happen? Is that basement sewing room damp?”

“Not at all, I can’t understand what happened. Here, look at this.” She opened her purse and brought out a little gray plastic needle safe. She unsnapped the catch to expose a white magnetic surface on which were captured six needles. Their silvery smoothness was marred by tiny flecks of rust.

“They look as if they were left out in the rain,” remarked Betsy.

Godwin and Emily came over for a look and agreed the needles must have gotten wet somehow. Shelly denied again her basement room was damp. She insisted to Emily that she would have noticed if there had been a flood. No, the water heater and washing machine in the other part of the basement hadn’t suffered a broken pipe. And no, it wasn’t dew sneaking in a window—the window in the room was filled with glass blocks and did not open. Nor was it improperly installed, so there were no leaks. “That room is dry as the Sahara in August,” declared Shelly.

Godwin and Emily declared themselves baffled and went back to their seats.

“Are all your needles rusted like this?” asked Betsy.

“No, only the ones not put away in needle cases. These, for instance, and two left tucked into the corner of works in progress. Those last two left rust marks on the fabric. So I’ll need a bottle of Whink, too.” Whink was a product that made rust stains disappear as if by magic.

“Not—” Betsy cut herself short with a glance at the Monday Bunch.

“No, that piece was sitting out on my desk, but there wasn’t a needle stuck in it, so it’s fine.” Shelly smiled. “It’s nearly done. I’ll bring it in to be finished in a few days.”

“Good.”

Seeing they weren’t going to get any good clues about Shelly’s designer piece, the Monday Bunch adjourned their meeting and departed.

Besides the Whink, Shelly bought nearly two dozen needles in various sizes. Not that many were marred by rust, but the needles came in packs of four or six or eight, and besides, once started, it’s hard for a needleworker to stop buying needles. Shelly bought a packet of size 17F Bodkins, two sizes of Chenille, size one and size five Crewel Sharps, and four sizes of Tapestry, from eighteens to twenty-eights.

“The eyes are nearly worn through on my sharps anyhow,” she said. “I just don’t understand how the others got rusty in the first place. That room has always been almost too dry for comfort. I think it’s all the lights in there.”