Buttons and Bones (15 page)

“That she backed her husband up in everything he did.”

The waitress walked up then with a big round tray holding their food: chicken in hot garlic sauce, beef with ginger scallions, and shrimp with sa dae sauce. All talk came to an end while it was distributed, and they took a few first bites.

Nowicki didn’t eat for a few moments, then took a deep breath and resolutely took a big forkful. “Tastes good,” he said, though Betsy was of the opinion that he wouldn’t have known if it was good or not, upset as he was by the topic of their questioning.

“What now?” he asked.

“We’ll share what you told us with the investigation team up in Cass County,” said Jill. “They may come to you and the rest of your family with some questions.”

“I’ll just bet they do,” said Nowicki. “And I wish them luck getting any information out of my folks.”

“Where was your grandparents’ house, which you said was on the edge of town?” asked Betsy. “I mean, was it in Morris?”

“No, it was in Albert Lea. To this day no one in my family will visit Albert Lea, or even stop for gas there. They wouldn’t tell me why until I was in high school. I used to think there were bad people living there.”

Jill said, “Just out of curiosity, that murder-suicide: what was that about?”

“Nobody knows. Grandmother shot Grandfather, then herself. No one knows why. What’s your interest in this anyhow? Why not just let the cops handle it?”

Jill said, “Much as we admire the police, we are taking a personal interest. It’s our cabin, and we want to know why there was a skeleton in the cellar.”

Nowicki grimaced. “I guess finding it must have been unpleasant.”

“Scary and aggravating,” said Betsy. “The police treated the cabin like a crime scene and ran us off while they investigated.” When he looked questioningly at her, she said, “I was there, too.” She gestured with her fork—she had never mastered the art of eating with chopsticks. “I’m godmother of her daughter.”

Now that Nowicki was sure he had nothing more to tell them, he relaxed and the rest of the meal was taken up by pleasant, unhelpful conversation.

 

 

 

IT was a member of the Monday Bunch who suggested a use for the social security number. The next morning, Phil came in to buy yarn to crochet a second cup cover, this one for his wife, and Godwin filled him in on the latest in Betsy and Jill’s sleuthing.

“Did you know,” said Phil, “that if you send three dollars to the Social Security Administration along with a name and social security number, they will forward a message to that person?”

Betsy chuckled. “Now, Phil, that’s
got
to be an urban legend!”

“Swear to God,” said Phil, raising both hands and his skein of yarn, right hand higher than the left. “Daughter of a friend of mine reconnected with an old boyfriend that way.”

“How did this woman just happen to know her old boyfriend’s social security number?”

“Because he had been a soldier, and the Army started using social security numbers as ID numbers and the two of them had written to one another after he joined up. You know, love letters. So she kept them, and his return address had his social security number on it.”

“Awwwwww,” sighed Godwin. “Did they find out they were still in love?”

“Yeah, but it didn’t last. They’d gotten too different from each other. Nothing in common but that long-ago romance.”

“Awwww!” said Godwin again but this time his tone was disappointed.

“And you know the daughter?”

“Not personally, but like I said, she’s the daughter of a friend of mine. He told me the sad story over a couple of beers one night.”

“Fair enough. Three dollars, you say.”

“Yes,” said Phil with a nod. “You send it to the Social Security Administration. Put your message in an envelope with the person’s name and number on the outside. They’ll forward it, but it’s up to the person to decide whether to get in touch, or not.”

“Are you going to try it?” asked Godwin after Phil had left.

“I think I’ll let Jill try to contact Helga—those two have the cabin in common, so I think Helga is more likely to respond to Jill.”

It was near closing time. Betsy and Godwin were sitting at the library table in the center of the shop talking about the fall window display.

“To keep on with the classes theme, let’s put up samplers and schoolhouse patterns,” Betsy said. “Which reminds me, I’ve never worked a sampler. Maybe I should, just to keep things fair.”

“‘Keep things fair’?”

“Every so often I’ll get a customer asking about doing her first sampler. I feel a little awkward recommending one or another when I’ve never even tried one myself. I should, since they were originally meant to teach little girls various stitches and their alphabet and numbers.”

“That’s all you need to know about samplers,” said Godwin. “The rest is a matter of the stitcher’s personal taste. We’ve got four sampler models on our wall in back, two books, and probably a dozen more patterns to choose from.”

“Okay, you’re right. The reason I’ve never stitched a sampler is that I just can’t whomp up the desire to.”

“One of these days a pattern will come in and you’ll jump on it—” The door sounded its two notes, indicating a customer coming in. “Trust me,” Godwin concluded, standing to go greet their visitor.

Betsy didn’t recognize the customer. She was medium-tall, with brown eyes and hair dyed an attractive streaky brown, wearing a long blue denim dress, matching sneakers, and carrying a purse that looked to be made from an old pair of jeans. She was probably in her middle or late sixties.

“May I help you find something?” Godwin asked.

“I’m looking for Betsy Devonshire,” the woman replied, her eyes wandering to and past Betsy, still sitting at the table writing a note on the window planning sheet.

Betsy looked up. “I’m Betsy Devonshire,” she said, rising.

“I’m Molly Fabrae.”

“Oh, hi! I didn’t recognize you! What brings you all the way over to this end of the Cities?”

“I didn’t recognize you, either. I’m here because I simply couldn’t wait for you to call me. I had to come and talk to you, to see if you’ve found out anything.”

Godwin stepped away from the woman’s line of sight, and studied her sharply. Betsy had told him about Molly’s conversation with her and Jill.

Now the woman turned a little to look at Godwin, who suddenly developed an interest in checking the display of metallic floss on a nearby spinner rack. Then she looked back at Betsy, an unspoken request twined in her eyebrows.

“Here,” said Betsy, “let’s go in back where we can sit down and talk a little more privately. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

“A cup of tea would be heaven.”

“I have orange pekoe, English breakfast, and several herbals,” Betsy said, thereby warning that the teas came in a bag. Some preferred their tea properly prepared from loose leaves.

“Orange pekoe, thank you. No sweetener or lemon, please.”

Betsy selected two pretty porcelain cups, poured simmering water from the electric kettle, and brought the beverages to the table—she had chosen for herself a raspberry-flavored herbal tea.

“I don’t understand,” said Molly after taking a grateful sip. “Is this your store?”

“Yes. What don’t you understand?”

“Do you have two jobs, then? Shop owner and private detective?”

“I investigate as an amateur. It’s more like a hobby. A serious, driven hobby, but one I don’t get paid for.”

“Have you been doing it long?”

“A few years. I’ve met with some success. The local police department thinks I can be useful at times.” Betsy smiled, remembering the days when Sergeant Mike Malloy had considered her a hazardous interference with his job.

“What are you trying to accomplish in the case of the old cabin?”

“I’m assisting Jill Larson. Her husband is a police sergeant and she’s a former police sergeant who quit to raise their children. More than her husband, I think she’s taking it personally that a vacation home they brought their children to turns out to have had a human skeleton in the cellar. She wants to know, ‘All right, who put that there?’ A very typical cop attitude, if you think about it.”

Molly choked on her tea as a little laugh was forced from her. “I would think of it more as a mommy attitude myself. Okay, I understand where she is coming from, but how do you figure in?”

“Jill is among my very closest friends. She has asked me to assist her, and I’ve agreed.”

“And you’re looking for Helga fon-what’s-her-name Farmer.”

“And her husband, your father. You said he disappeared?”

“Yes.” Molly frowned at her father being brought into the discussion, but then she nodded. “All right, let me tell you about him. He got orders overseas, and before he was to board the transport ship, he got leave to come home—to his home with Helga, that is—and arrange things—you know, make sure the insurance was paid up, the house was in good order, like that.”

Betsy nodded. “Where were they living?”

“In the cabin. Helga was from up there. I think she may have had family up there. The war had started and he was going to be away a lot, so he wanted her to be near her family. But it took him away from his original family, me and my mother and my two brothers.” She paused. “Well, Billy, he was the older one, enlisted in the Army as soon as he turned seventeen, which was in 1942—and then we lost him. Billy died in a car accident in England just two months out of boot camp.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Betsy, speaking to the pain in Molly’s eyes.

“Thank you. And then the Army came by again, this time looking for Dad. I don’t remember any of this—it’s funny the things you remember and don’t from when you’re small. I remember a little doll with frizzy hair and the color of the blanket on my bed. What I don’t remember is the day the Army came to tell my mother her son was dead or when they came again a year later wondering if she’d heard from Dad because he was supposed to report for duty at the Presidio in San Francisco and never did.”

Trying to keep from crying, Molly lifted her eyes and let them wander around the walls of that part of the shop. They were covered with finished models of counted cross-stitch patterns. “This is a nice place,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Betsy. “That must have been a terrible time for your mother. Is she still living?”

“No, she died twenty years ago. Cancer.”

“How sad and awful.”

“Yes, it was a long, terrible struggle.”

Betsy took a sip of her tea. “I would have liked to talk with her.”

“She probably would have told you what she always said to me: ‘That woman’—meaning Helga—killed him.”

“And you think so, too?”

“I guess I do. I mean, when I heard about the skeleton, I thought, Mama was right, she was right. But now they say the skeleton is of some German prisoner who escaped. That doesn’t make any sense to me! What would a German prisoner be doing in that cabin? What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. I do know Helga worked at the POW camp in Remer, but how the prisoner knew where she lived, I have no idea. It was probably a coincidence that he ended up in her cabin, though why he came there and who killed him is a mystery. Was he killed because he came there? Or would he have been killed in any case, and it just happened to be there?”

“What are they going to do with the bones?”

“I should think they’ll try to find any family he might have in Germany and send his remains back to them for burial.”

Molly nodded once, and said bitterly, “Then they, at least, have an old question answered.”

“Maybe when we find Helga, she can tell us what happened to your father.”

Angry hope flared in Molly’s eyes. “That would be wonderful! Do you think you can actually find her?”

“We’re trying hard. It’s possible, of course, that she’s no longer alive. I promise to let you know as soon as we find out something.”

Molly finished her tea and left, and Betsy resumed her seat at the library table with Godwin. They had barely found their places in the patterns and models and sheets of paper on the table when the door again sounded and this time Connor came in.

“Hello, pet,” he said just a hair too cheerfully, and Godwin gave Betsy a huge smile.

Betsy smiled back. “Hello, Connor,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I want to come with you to Thunder Lake,” he said.

“Well, you can’t,” she replied. “I’m going to be very busy.”

“Now, Betsy,” scolded Godwin mildly, adding to Connor, “Why do you want to go with her?”

“Because I’d like to see her working her ‘hobby.’ And because I’d like some time alone with her—we haven’t had much of that lately.”

“And whose fault is that?” asked Betsy, feeling a touch of anger.

“Mine. Entirely mine,” he said, so meekly the stone in her heart melted. “Will you forgive me?”

“Yes,” she decided. He came to sit in a chair beside her and take her hand.

“Now, isn’t that better?” he said, and she immediately released his hand.

“Of course it is,” said Godwin. “See how nice it is when you stop being mad at each other? Betsy, I think you should let him come along.”

“Please don’t be angry with me,” said Connor. “I’m doing the best I can, truly.”

She looked into his charming, earnest face and sighed. If only she didn’t like him so much! “Very well,” she said. “I’m not angry—and yes, you can come along.”

 

 

 

WHEN Betsy spoke to her that evening, Jill was surprised and pleased to find there might be a way to contact Helga. “Will you help me write the letter? What kind of a note would she be most likely to respond to?”

Betsy thought for a minute. “I know. ‘We bought the pretty little cabin you used to live in. We’re thinking of re-modeling it. Would you be willing to tell us what it was like when you lived in it?’”