Cutwork (2 page)

Irene saw the world in a very peculiar way, Betsy knew. Still, it couldn’t be possible Irene was making a joke in
such
poor taste. And the sirens had been real. And her mention of a carved lion . . .

Back in March, when the slides and photographs of artwork arrived from artists seeking a place in the fair, Betsy had been allowed to sit in on the jurying process one evening. Some of the art she thought was pretty good didn’t move the jury. Other stuff that made the members gasp and exclaim in pleasure meant nothing to her. Then,
click,
and up on the screen came a magnificent wood carving, seen a little to the left from head-on. A murmur of pleasure swept the room.

A big-maned lion was in a fully extended run, one big paw reaching out for the back leg of a fleeing antelope. The artist had cleverly used a natural dark place in the wood to place and accent the lion’s flowing mane. But it was the terror in the antelope’s eyes, and the businesslike intensity captured in the lion’s, that had been remarkable.

“Well, are you coming or not?” asked Irene impatiently, pulling Betsy out of her reverie.

“I thought you said the police were already there,” said Betsy.

“Oh, yes, and they’ve been talking to me and taking pictures and all. I sneaked away to get you.”

“They won’t want me over there,” said Betsy, “and besides, I have to stay here, I have things to do here.”

Irene stared at her. “I can’t believe you don’t care if a murderer gets away.”

“I doubt very much if a murderer could kill someone in a place as crowded as this and get away with it,” said Betsy truthfully. “There are probably all kinds of witnesses. Including you, right? Shouldn’t you get back over there? They’re probably looking for you.”

Irene looked over her shoulder. “Yes, I imagine they are. Very well, I’ll go back. But you call me when you’re ready to take over the investigation.”

Betsy watched her go, a skinny woman in a long, shapeless brown dress and old-fashioned sneakers. It was true. Betsy had been involved in several murder investigations, but strictly as an amateur. How could Irene think the police would be eager to have her barge in? Besides, this probably wasn’t a murder at all. Irene was growing more eccentric every month, it seemed, now that her needlework inventions were being taken seriously by the art community. No, Betsy would stay right here and wait for someone more reliable to come and tell her what was going on. Murder, indeed!

1

For a while, Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy thought this was going to be another one of those screwy cases, the kind his amateur nemesis would get involved in. (Mike couldn’t have defined “nemesis,” not exactly like in the dictionary, but he was certain it described a certain woman who was messing up his career by interfering where she wasn’t needed.)

It started Sunday morning, during a thunderstorm. The town of Excelsior had only two investigators in its little police department, so in addition to normal working hours, Malloy and his partner had twenty-four on-twenty-four off standby duty. Today Malloy was on, and so had to restrict his fishing to Lake Minnetonka. Which was fine, Minnetonka was the finest bass lake in the state, one of the finest in the country, probably. Plus, the weatherman Malloy had come most nearly to trust said it would clear before eleven.

Excelsior was also a very quiet town, so when his beeper went off while he was still in the garage loading up his boat, he was surprised.

Walking to the kitchen to phone, he decided it was probably another in the short series of burglaries plaguing the town. Someone was climbing into unlocked cars parked over at Maynard’s for Sunday brunch and, if there was a garage door opener on the visor, checking the glove box for insurance cards that gave the home address. Then when the folks came home from brunch, they’d find someone had gone in through the garage and stolen all the easy-to-fence stuff.

So instead of going fishing, Mike would have to spend most of the day taking statements and filing reports. Damn.

He dialed the number and got an answer on the first ring.

“Sergeant Cross,” said Jill Cross.

“Malloy here, whatcha got?”

“A homicide down at the art fair on The Common.”

This was so far from what he was expecting that all he could say was
“Huh?”
He hated when he did that; it made him sound dumb.

Jill repeated herself in that cool voice of hers—she had never said “Huh?” in her life, probably—adding, “The reporting person is Irene Potter—”

“Oh, Christ!” he interrupted. Because Irene Potter was Excelsior’s craziest lady. And the only time Irene had been in his office on official business, she had brought along Betsy Devonshire, AKA Mike Malloy’s nemesis. (That had been when Mike began to learn he had a nemesis.)

But just as if he hadn’t interrupted, Jill continued, “And the person in charge of the fair is Deb Hart. Ms. Hart is here at the scene, which has been secured. I’ll ensure that Irene is here for you, too. The forensics team is on its way. Be warned, the scene is kinda, um, messy.”

Oh, Jeez. That last, coming from the unflappable Jill Cross, didn’t help. “I’ll be right over.”

Mike called the woman next door to tell her he had a call and could she keep an eye on JR and Mary Beth until he or his wife got back? The woman sighed but then said sure, send them over.

Mike got into his wife’s voice mail at the nursing home and left a message, then drove his blue Chevy four by four over to the park. It was only six minutes away, but the rain had about quit by the time he got there. He pulled into the single vacant parking space on Lake Street that overlooked the park. A wilted cardboard sign marked it as reserved for emergency vehicles. Since he was wearing faded jeans and a chambray shirt with fraying patches on the elbows, he turned his ID folder inside out and hung it on the shirt’s pocket so the gold badge showed. Just like the cops on TV. He remembered to take his lucky fishing hat off and leave it in the truck.

The storm’s purple clouds were only a short distance out on the lake, lightning still visible in them, and there were still audible rumbles of thunder.

He stood a minute at the top of a plain wooden staircase leading down to the park, to look the scene over. Lake Street, which he’d just come up, ran along the lake until The Common began. Then the park stayed down near lake level while Lake Street climbed a steep hill. People alighting from their cars halfway along had to come down a bluff via the staircase. The street then went downhill until at the far end it was level with the park again.

This section of park, a grassy field at the bottom of the stairs, was covered with hundreds of square white tents in neat double rows, with a single row along the lakefront. The tents were like stores, open at the front and full of art stuff for sale. The art fair was an annual event; Mike’s wife had gone last year and come home with a sheet-iron sunflower that weighed twenty pounds and rusted so bad it killed her favorite rosebush.

Mike had no doubt where the problem was: An ambulance, two squad cars with their lights flickering, and Excelsior’s new fire truck were at the far end of a vertical row. Mike could see the deep grooves cut by the tires of the vehicles in the soggy grass, and decided to leave his pickup where it was. He ducked back in it briefly to get a notebook and pen from the glove box.

The sun broke through as he went down the wet staircase, a slim man in his late thirties with a freckled face and a thin but sensitive mouth.

The tents were emptying of people who had sought shelter from the rain. The artists were talking fast to the last of them, holding up items and gesturing. The tent he was passing was full of felt hats with floppy brims and fabric flowers. The artist wore one himself; he looked ridiculous. In the next tent there were glass cases on white pedestals under bright lights. In the cases were clumsy-looking rings and pins, some with colored stones. The prices on little cards in the boxes indicated the metal was real gold, the stones real gems. That didn’t keep them from being, in Malloy’s never-humble opinion, ugly. The next tent held kites. Not regular kites; there was one shaped like the Wright Brothers airplane that even had a silhouette of a man lying on it. Another was a three-dimensional pirate ship whose sails provided the lift like a box kite, probably. A really big one shaped like a dragon was being sailed skillfully higher and higher in the clearing sky. JR would love it if his dad brought one of these home. But not right now.

Mike turned his attention away from the kites to focus on the tent at the end of the row.

Three men whose shoulder patches said they were from Shorewood were keeping a crowd back, a crowd that had been small when Mike first spotted it, but was growing fast now the rain had stopped. Mike edged his way through and started to say something to one of the uniformed officers, but heard another already on his radio asking for yet more help. Thank God for the agreement that all the little departments in the towns around Minnetonka would come to one another’s aid.

Mike went to the tent for a look. There were three men in civilian clothes standing with their backs to the tent, forming a screen of sorts. They were carrying the cases of equipment necessary for collecting evidence. Mike recognized one as an investigator from the state crime team, so probably the others were, too. Inside, a man with a video camera was recording the interior. The video operator moved aside and Malloy leaned way forward and got his first glimpse of the victim, sprawled on the floor in a big red—

Malloy immediately turned away, wiping his face with one hand. Jesus! Jill’s description of “um, messy” was, um, right. He squeezed his eyes shut, blew gently, and saw Sergeant Jill Cross looking at him. She was all crisp and calm, like this was something you ran across every day. She nodded at him and came over.

“What happened here?” he asked.

“A knifing. This is the victim’s booth.” Sergeant Cross was a tall woman, a natural ash blond, not at all skinny but somehow not fat, either. She had a face that went with her voice, cool and showing nothing of her thoughts. She wasn’t an investigator but a supervisor, and so was in uniform. Mike had gone from not liking her when she signed on as a patrol officer—he disliked female cops in general—to an uneasy admiration. She rarely put a foot wrong and had all but aced the sergeant’s exam a few months ago. On the other hand, she and his nemesis were good friends, and his nemesis was an interfering civilian, old enough to know better.

“Any idea who the victim is?” Mike asked.

“Robert McFey. He was a wood carver, and it seems his throat was cut with one of his own knives.” Jill glanced sideways at the tent, which had shelves in it with carvings of animals on them, and a couple more on a long table set like a counter across the open front.

“Any idea who might’ve done this?” he asked.

“Not yet. The weapon appears to be the small knife beside the body. There’s an overturned cash box in there that seems to be empty.”

“And Irene Potter saw it happen?”

“No, she found the body. She’s here selling her needle art, she’s got a booth just up the way. She came over for a look at his work and went off like the noon siren.”

“How long ago?”

“Just before ten, the fair was about to start.” Mike checked his watch. Ten-fifty. “You want to talk to her?” Cross asked. “She walked off a while ago, but she’s back.”

Mike sighed. “Okay, I’ll start with her.”

“You want me to stay?”

“No, no, just bring her over and then go back to crowd control or whatever you were doing.”

“Yessir,” she said coolly. Had he put that clumsily? Mike had never felt comfortable around Cross. He didn’t want a sexual harassment suit, which in his opinion every female cop in the country was spring-loaded to bring. He looked at her, ready to give a friendly smile, but she was already walking away.

Irene Potter was the same skinny little woman with shiny dark eyes and very curly dark hair he remembered. She wore a light brown dress and pink Keds. Her earrings were shaped like tiny scissors; they glittered in the fresh sunlight. Like her eyes.

“Hello, Sergeant Malloy,” she said cheerily. “Isn’t this just dreadful?”

Mike pulled his notebook from a back pocket and slipped the ballpoint pen clipped to its creased cover off. He opened the notebook to a blank page, noted the time, date, and Irene’s name. He said, “How did you come to find the body?”

“I believe I was summoned by a Greater Power,” she chirped, and he repressed a sigh. She continued, “I was arranging my pieces in my booth when all of a sudden I had this . . .
urge,
a powerful urge, to go look at Mr. McFey’s work, even though it was raining hard. I took my umbrella and . . .” She gestured awe by raising both hands. “So beautiful! Such energy! I wanted to ask him how long he’d been doing his art. At first, I thought he had stepped out. But he hadn’t. Because then I . . . I
saw him
. I think I screamed, but I don’t know for sure, except my throat is sore, and it wasn’t sore before. So I really think I must have screamed.” She put one slim hand to her throat and smiled like a school-child with the right answer.

Mike didn’t write any of this down. “Did you notice anyone hanging around his tent before you got this urge?”

“No, I was busy with my own arranging. It’s so important to get everything just right, so the eye travels naturally from piece to piece until it reaches the one that pleases the eye, that one
must buy
.” Her eyes had gone dreamy and her hands moved upward again, this time arranging invisible works on an invisible wall.

“Yeah, okay, you weren’t looking,” said Mike. “I understand. But you got your stuff arranged and came over to look at this man’s wood carvings and you saw him. What time was this?”

“It was just a few minutes before the fair opened, though there were customers already starting to come through. It was raining simply buckets, but I had my umbrella, so I wasn’t afraid to go out of my booth. The fair opened at ten.” Mike kept looking at her, and she blinked and said gently, as to an obtuse person, “It was about five minutes before ten that I went to talk to him.”