Buttons and Bones (20 page)

The Kaiserhof had an old-fashioned waiting room with two large murals, one depicting a German-style house and the other the mansion built by Augustus Schell, founder of the local brewery. Down a hallway, the rest of the place had a separate room for the bar, then a series of dining rooms, each decorated slightly differently with half timbers and wainscoting and exposed beams. The place was obviously old, probably dating to the early twentieth century or even earlier.

“I feel like we’ve walked on a set for a light opera,” said Jill, looking around approvingly.

Betsy agreed. “Any minute a set of pretty young women in dirndls will waltz in singing something from
Die Fledermaus
.”

Jill had the sauerkraut and ribs, a Kaiserhof specialty; Betsy ordered the German sampler, which included
landjaeger
, ribs, red cabbage, and German-style potato salad. The meals came on big platters.

“You know, the Chamber of Commerce manager in New Ulm is named Sweeney,” said Jill with the dead-pan expression that meant she was pulling Betsy’s leg.

“Is that a corruption of a German name?” asked Betsy.

“No, it’s a Norwegian name that is pronounced something like that, but spelled S-V-E-I-N-E so locals pronounced it Swine. I understand his father actually changed it to Sweeney, but the son changed it back again. I guess he’s got more patience.”

“If he’s running the Chamber, he must have.” Betsy had done some volunteer work for the Excelsior Chamber and found it a thankless area of local politics.

Their waitress, a college-age woman, had never heard of Peter Ball, and it wasn’t until near the end of their meal that an old man came by their table. He was a medium-tall man of stocky build, very friendly, and like Peter, he didn’t look his age—he was Mr. Veigel, owner of the Kaiserhof, grandson of the founder. All he wanted to know was if they had persuaded Peter Ball to come back. “You tell that old man we miss him,” he ordered.

The meal finished, they staggered out, replete.

“Look,” said Jill, “Nadel Kunst is right across the street.”

“I think I can make it that far,” panted Betsy, “if we stop for a rest halfway.”

They made it and—encouraged by oncoming traffic—without a pause to rest.

Inside, Nadel Kunst was shaped like a capital
L
, with the top of the long upright facing the street. It was packed with shelves and rotating racks loaded with knitting needles and yarn, counted cross-stitch patterns and floss, crochet hooks and fibers, and Hardanger, punch needle, and tatting supplies.

“I bet Helga Ball shopped in here,” murmured Betsy, noting the many sizes of crochet hooks suspended on a rack.

At the back of the shop was a wooden table cluttered with magazines, patterns, coffee mugs, and an open package of Oreo cookies. Three women were sitting at the table, knitting. One, a blonde in her forties with a pretty face, rose and came toward them. “How may I help you?” she asked in a surprisingly deep voice.

Jill replied, “Cindy, this is Betsy Devonshire, who owns Crewel World in Excelsior.”

“Of course it is! Hello, Betsy! I see you finally decided to accept my invitation to come see my shop!”

“Hi, Cindy. Sorry it took so long. What a nice place you have. I see you know my friend Jill Cross.”

“I do know her, yes. So, Jill, what brings you all the way down here from Excelsior again?”

“Actually we came to New Ulm to interview a man named Peter, who used to be married to a woman named Helga.”

“Not Peter Ball!” declared Cindy.

“Why, yes, do you know him?”

“He’s a very faithful customer!”

“Wait a minute,” said Betsy. “You mean his wife was a faithful customer, don’t you?”

“I mean dear Peter. He buys all his crochet materials from me.”

“Peter Ball crochets?”

“Yes, of course. Did you interview him in his home?”

“Yes, we did,” said Betsy, nodding.

“Then surely you saw his magnificent doilies.”

“
His?
He said his wife did them.”

“Oh? Oh, dear, I wonder if he’ll be angry that I told you he made them.”

“Why would he lie?” asked Jill sharply.

“Probably because he didn’t want to admit that, as a man, he’s wonderfully competent at what some would see as a very feminine occupation.”

Betsy thought about that. Peter Ball didn’t look effeminate, but he was a short, slim man, so maybe he was a bit sensitive about a hobby some would see as delicate, even womanly. And exuberant, lacy doilies weren’t the same thing as, say, sweaters or mittens.

“Where did he learn to crochet anyway?” she asked.

“He told me his wife taught him how a long time ago.”

“Do you think that’s true?” asked Jill.

“Oh, very likely. She was good at most of the needle arts: knitting, crochet, counted cross-stitch—she was a regular customer in here before she died, and taught a class about every other year. But he outshone her at crochet. He’s amazing—he can look at a piece for about a minute and copy it perfectly.”

“Does he teach classes?” asked Betsy.

“No, he says he wouldn’t be any good at that, because he lacks patience. That might be true. I’ve known other talented stitchers like that.”

Betsy nodded and so did Jill. But maybe he didn’t want his hobby widely known. “Cindy, would you mind not telling him you told us he crochets?”

“Certainly, if you want me not to.”

“Thanks.”

Then Betsy noticed the unusual way Cindy had arranged the shelves holding knitting yarn at the back of the shop. Instead of level shelves, the boards had been fastened to the wall diagonally, with more boards going the other way diagonally. This arrangement formed floor-to-ceiling diamond-shaped compartments into which the yarn was laid, each holding a color or weight of its own.

Betsy went back for a closer look. “What a clever set of shelves!” she said. “I may copy that for my shop.”

Jill approached the shelves, too, the better to see their contents. “Well, look at this, she has Windy Valley Qiviut yarn!”

Made from the undercoat of musk ox, qiviut was softer and lighter than cashmere and eight times warmer than wool—and far, far more expensive. Each skein, containing 218 yards, weighed only an ounce. She turned to Betsy. “You aren’t about to place an order for this, are you?”

Betsy came for a closer look at the stuff. It was the softest yarn she had ever handled, and almost weightless in her hand. Then she saw the price.

“I’m afraid not, unless I get an order in advance.”

Cindy said, “I special ordered it for a customer, and she got sick and I held it for her until I’d had it past the return date, then she up and died on me. I can make you a deal on it.”

So Jill and Betsy each bought a skein.

Seventeen

THE next morning, Betsy, back in Excelsior, was in the process of opening up the shop when she found a note on the checkout desk, left by a part-timer yesterday. “Violet Putnam McDonald called. From Longville. Has information about Helga Farmer. Please call.” There was a phone number.

Godwin unlocked the front door coming in as she was reading the note, and she waited while he relocked it—it was only nine forty, and the shop didn’t open until ten—before holding up the slip of paper and asking, “What do you know about this?”

“What is it?” he asked, coming to take it from her hand. He read the message and said, “I don’t know anything about it. I was out on the driving range yesterday, and while your suggestion that I hit a couple hundred balls was an exaggeration, it was not a gross one.”

“How’s your slice doing?”

“Better than ever,” he said glumly. “The more I work on it, the slice-ier it gets.”

Yet he didn’t sound as depressed as he had when the slice first appeared. “Still want to quit?” she asked.

“Heavens, no!” It was interesting how, although he was impatient with his progress, Godwin was becoming more deeply involved with the game, rather than less. She was not familiar with golf, but she’d seen the same thing happen to novice stitchers, so this phenomenon was not a mystery to her.

“Who is Violet?” he asked Betsy.

“I have no idea. I don’t even know how she found out I am interested in Helga Farmer Ball.”

“Oh, come on now,” teased Godwin. “You who are familiar with the big ol’ grapevine under whose shade we in Excelsior cower cannot understand how someone in the even smaller town of Longville might learn of your interest?”

“Well, that’s true,” sighed Betsy, rembering the woman at the turtle races.

“So, are you going to phone her?”

“Of course.”

But there was no answer—nor was there an answering machine, which surprised Betsy. In her experience, nearly everyone had an answering machine.

The mail carrier came in soon after—a new man, who apparently was taking a different route, because usually the mail arrived in the late afternoon.

Betsy sighed over the invoices as she sorted through the envelopes, then paused over a single small envelope without a return address. The envelope was addressed to her at the shop in small block letters. Inside was a three by five card and on it, again in block letters, were two words: LAY OFF.

Godwin saw her staring at it, and came to look over her shoulder. “Oh, my God, a threatening letter! What have you been up to?”

“For heaven’s sake, Goddy, you know what I’ve been up to! This is probably some idiot’s idea of a joke.” She turned it over and back again. “Or maybe it’s the opening salvo of an advertising campaign.” But on closer examination, the brief message had been written, not printed on the card.

She reached for the phone and dialed Jill’s number. “Has your mail come yet?” she asked. Jill’s hadn’t, so Betsy said, “When it does, call me. No, I can’t talk now, I’ve got two customers coming in.”

They were the Murphy twins and they were brimming over with An Idea. A shop they had visited while on a trip to Canada offered a ten percent discount on any item bought on the customer’s birthday, and they had a birthday coming up and what did Betsy think of that idea?

Betsy said she’d think about it, and the twins, who were in their fifties and still dressing alike, left, murmuring in one another’s ears, without buying anything.

“So what
do
you think of that idea?” asked Godwin.

“I think it’s a good one, but we’ll have to ask for proof—and I wonder how many customers would be willing to hand over a driver’s license so I can check their age?”

“Oooooh, there’s an ugly thought! So let’s do it, with a warning that we’ll check IDs, because then not everyone will take advantage of it.”

“All right, announce it in the next newsletter and on our web site. Thank the Murphy twins for the idea.”

Around two, Jill called. “Well, I got my mail,” she said. “But why did you ask me to call you when it arrived?”

“Did you receive anything unusual?” Betsy asked.

“No,” Jill said. “Did you?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“What was it you got?”

“An anonymous warning.” Betsy described it.

“Funny, I don’t remember you giving your address to Robert Nowicki.”

“I’m in the phone book: Crewel World, Betsy Devonshire, Proprietor. You think it’s from Nowicki?”

“Well, I don’t think there’s been enough time for it to be from Peter Ball. And who else could possibly have sent such a warning? Not Molly Fabrae, she wants us to find out what happened. Can you read the postmark on it?”

Betsy looked at the envelope. “Yes, it was sent from Minneapolis.”

“Mr. Nowicki was in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago looking for a nursing home. Maybe he came back to resume his search.”

“But hold on, we wanted to talk to him to find out what he could tell us about the sale of the cabin to his grandparents. That happened more than a year after Dieter Keitel walked away from the camp. What possible connection could his grandparents have to that?”

“None—that we know of.”

Betsy ran her fingers through her hair while she thought about that. “What, you’re thinking they might have known one another, the Nowickis and the Farmers?”

“It’s possible.”

“Oh, Jill, this is ridiculous! All we’re getting from our investigation is more possibilities, not fewer!”

“You want to quit?”

Betsy looked at the card with the two words on it: LAY OFF
.
She was awfully tempted.

“No,” she said. “Not yet anyway.”

Jill breathed a sigh of relief. “Me, neither,” she said.

Betsy said, “Interesting that he sent it to me at the shop. I didn’t tell him about Crewel World. And it’s kind of a thin threat. ‘Lay off,’ I mean. Not even an ‘Or else.’ ”

“I think the ‘or else’ is understood. I’m going to tell Lars about this, and I think you should tell Mike.” Mike, as in Sergeant Mike Malloy, one of the two detectives on Excelsior’s small police force, the one who knew Betsy and her peculiar habit of getting mixed up in crime.