Knitting Bones (6 page)

I
T
was late the next morning. Godwin was just starting to think about lunch: Should he go first, or send Marti, the part-timer? It had been a slow morning, and he was sitting at the library table in the middle of the shop, stitching a model Christmas stocking. It was cut out of a piece of canvas and he was covering it in shades of red, white, yellow, and green yarns in a bargello pattern. Bargello is beautiful with its sharply curved lines, and not difficult—if the first line is done correctly. Also, once under way, the stitcher can put it down and pick it up again very easily, a nice quality if one is (hopefully) constantly interrupted by customers. One trick Janet Perry suggests is to begin that first row in the center of the line. Leave half the yarn hanging, parking its end at one end of the canvas, and work the line to the end. Then come back and pick up the loose end and finish the line in the other direction. Godwin was doing an illusion pattern, where the center section had steeper and narrower lines, making it look as if it were partly folded.

He’d done the first row and then quite a few more rows when the door sounded its two musical notes. He put his work down and stood to smile a greeting. And then smiled more warmly. A tall woman with a serene Gibson-girl face and very pale hair pulled back in a braid was standing there in pale green wool slacks and matching soft flannel shirt.

“Hello, Jill!” he said. His voice went very high as he added, stooping, “And heh-woe to you, wittle darlin’!” to Emma Beth, who stuck a forefinger in her mouth and looked up doubtfully at her mother. Emma, even fairer than her mother, was delectable in wine corduroy overalls and a pink-and-wine sweater.

“It’s all right, baby, you may say hello to Godwin.”

“Woe,” said Emma obediently, looking at him.

“Not into baby talk, is she?” Godwin remarked, straightening.

“Not too much.”

So he made a silly face at the toddler, who suddenly warmed to him, grinning back.

Jill said, “Betsy told me she was going to send you to find out if Bob Germaine was leading a secret life.”

“Yes, she did. And I did. And he is.”

“Really?” Jill looked just a trifle taken aback. Since she rarely showed surprise, this gratified Godwin very much.

“Oh, yes,” he said, preening, “I have a lot of contacts in the gay community, so I talked to a lot of people. And I described the man I saw getting the check at the EGA convention banquet. That was Bob Germaine, and they said that from my description, it sounded like Stoney Durand, who is quite well known in the community.” Godwin raised and lowered his eyebrows in a complex way and Jill nodded comprehension.

“Well done,” she said. “Betsy asked me to come over today and talk to her. Is she free?”

“Sure. Go through the back door of the shop, so she doesn’t have to get up and answer the downstairs buzzer. Her apartment door’s unlocked.”

Jill didn’t ask if she could leave Emma with Godwin, for which he was grateful.

E
MMA
Elizabeth knew what a visit to Betsy’s apartment meant. She turned left into the kitchen with a one-word cry of happiness: “Cookie!”

“Hi, Betsy!” called Jill. “It seems I brought the Cookie Monster with me by mistake. I thought I had my lovely, well-mannered daughter along.”

“Cookie!” insisted the lovely daughter.

“The cookie jar is on the counter near the refrigerator!” called Betsy from her place on the couch.

“Cookie!” reiterated Emma, who could hear that magic word in any sentence, be it ever so long; and the next sound heard was the pottery lid being lifted off the pig-shaped jar.

A few moments later they came into the living room, Emma contentedly gnawing on a sugar cookie, Jill smiling a greeting.

Jill said, “Did you know Goddy can do the wave with his eyebrows?”

“What? Oh, that thing he’s started doing when he thinks I may be missing a point he’s trying to make. I bet he practices an hour in the mirror twice a week.”

“Kitty?” asked Emma, looking around.

But Sophie had vanished in that magical way some cats have, the instant they hear a child’s voice. Though Emma had a habit of spilling lickable cookie crumbs, she also loved to pull the cat’s tail and whiskers. Sophie knew she could gather up the crumbs after the child was gone.

Jill said, “The kitty is taking a nap. Would you like to take a nap?”

“No!”

“Her favorite word,” said Jill with a sigh. “I was just downstairs, talking to Goddy. Were you surprised to find out Bob Germaine is a closeted gay?”

“I’m not sure he is. I have only Godwin’s opinion.”

Jill raised her left eyebrow and said, “I take it Goddy is not a detective.”

“Well…he does his best. But in this case, he had an idea, and I think he only looked for information that would confirm it.”

Jill cocked the other of her pale eyebrows. “Where did he get that idea to start with?”

“He is sure Bob Germaine returned a flirting smile Goddy gave him as he went out of the banquet hall last Saturday night. Therefore, according to Goddy, he is a deeply closeted gay man.”

Jill’s lovely features went still for several seconds. Then she said, “I don’t believe it.”

Betsy felt a sharp stir of interest. “Have you met Bob Germaine?”

“Certainly. I’ve been to the Germaine house half a dozen times—maybe more. I’ve spent evenings with them. And I have never had the remotest idea that Bob was gay. He’s an artist, but more the serious kind than the flighty kind, you know?”

Betsy smiled. “More Russian than French, right?”

“I’d say he’s definitely more suffering than romantic, if that’s what you mean. He gets really intense when he’s on a project.”

“Allie said that about him. I wish I had met him, then I might have a better feel for this. What do you think, could he have been joking with Godwin? Does Bob know Goddy?”

“No, although he knows about him. Allie loves to talk about Godwin with me—she likes him at least as much as I do, and she’s always telling Bob the funny things he says. But I don’t think Godwin’s ever been to their house, and I’m quite sure Bob wouldn’t know him on sight. On the other hand, Goddy isn’t the kind to receive a message when one isn’t being sent, is he?”

“No, not normally. He broadcasts a lot, however. Maybe he saw something he liked in Bob, let it show, and Bob saw it. And, just kidding, smiled back at him.” She looked inquiringly at Jill.

Who nodded slowly. “I suppose so. Though that wasn’t exactly the right time and place for that sort of thing, was it?”

“I wouldn’t think so—but I don’t know Bob. You do.”

“And I don’t think he’d do something like that to someone he didn’t know, especially when he was acting on behalf of his employer. But downstairs just now Godwin said that when he described Bob Germaine to people in gay hangouts, they said they knew him—but by another name.”

Betsy nodded. “Stoney Durand. An unlikely pseudonym, don’t you think? But Goddy told me Stoney Durand is a well-known figure among a certain set of gay people. A wilder bunch, if I read Goddy’s euphemisms correctly.”

“That’s…different,” said Jill, using the Minnesota understatement for
very strange
. “If Bob were gay—which I don’t believe—I don’t think he’d be the wild and crazy type. He’d be the quiet kind, the one you never knew was gay until he introduced you to his partner.”

Betsy shrugged. “Well…maybe. I mean, if you’re living a double life, and you have to keep all your gay feelings locked away most of the time, it seems to me that you’d want to let them roar at least a little bit when they’re out for a walk. Take you, for instance.”

Both of Jill’s eyebrows went up. “Me?”

Betsy smiled. “Yes, you. You are this cool and calm person, and when you were a cop on patrol, you were so correct you could have given lessons to Sergeant Joe Friday. I was scared to death of you when I first met you.”

“You were?” Her ice-blue eyes twinkled with amusement.

“Sure. Then I started hearing stories about you. My favorite was about the time you put just a drop or two of tear gas on the heater of Lars’s patrol car on the coldest night of the year. He had to choose between freezing and crying his whole watch.”

Jill thawed into a smile. “And you realized that I roar sometimes, too.”

“Exactly. So I suppose it’s possible Bob Germaine lets loose when he’s out of the closet.”

Jill nodded. “In the sense that anything is possible, it’s possible. But I still don’t believe it.”

“That’s interesting. Because now Goddy’s all hot to go talking to people who came to the EGA convention.”

After a short silence, Jill said, “Did you ask me over here to see if I would go with him?”

“Yes,” Betsy admitted, and burst out, “I don’t know who else to ask!”

“Maybe you don’t need to ask anyone. Maybe this is a job you can’t do. Maybe you should tell Allie—wait a second.” Jill held up a hand, palm forward, a cop stopping traffic, while she thought. “Remember when Goddy was arrested for murder?”

“Yes, of course I do. Why?”

“Well, you involved a woman lawyer in the case. She ended up working as a PI, right?”

“Oh, you mean Susan Lavery. She calls herself a ‘recovering lawyer’ nowadays. She’s doing private-eye work.” Susan was a regular customer in Betsy’s shop—she claimed that she could sit anywhere doing needlework and no one, even the target of her stakeout, would realize it was a stakeout. A tall, thin, white-skinned woman with bright red hair, she was otherwise pretty conspicuous.

“You helped her change careers, maybe even saved her life,” said Jill. “Don’t you think she owes you a favor?”

“Well, she told me she does, said to ask her for help if I ever needed it.” Betsy nodded twice. “Oh, wow, I wonder why I didn’t think of her.” She looked up at Jill. “I’m confused a lot lately. Could it be the pain meds?”

“I don’t know. What are you taking?”

“Vicodin, mostly.”

Jill smiled. “Oh, yes, a couple of Vicodin will mess up anyone’s thinking. Nice stuff, otherwise.”

“Actually, I prefer Darvon. I was given Darvon years and years ago after a dentist took out my wisdom teeth. I’ve never forgotten how marvelous Darvon made me feel.” Betsy sighed. “I actually had my doctor write in my medical file that I was not to be given Darvon again, because I really,
really
like it.” Betsy sighed again, remembering how Darvon smoothed all the bumps out of her life the three days she was on it. Then she looked up and saw Jill smiling at her.

“Vicodin does a good job, too, I see.”

“Oh. Yes, I guess it does. All right, I’ll call Susan Lavery. But I wish you’d work for me. Godwin trusts you, and you used to be a cop.”

“But I never was a detective in the department.”

“No, but you did very well on patrol—and that calls for a lot of decisions based on your interpretation of what people say and how they behave.”

Jill nodded. “True. Emma Beth, come away from there!”

The child had fallen silent, a development that should have drawn Jill’s attention sooner. Now she was seen with one arm inserted nearly to her shoulder into Betsy’s knitting bag. Beside her on the carpet were several balls of yarn and a piece of knitting with needles sticking out of it. She glanced over at her mother, absorbing the look of censure with her mother’s own cool composure. “No,” she said calmly.

“One,” said her mother, just as calmly. “Two. Three.”

The arm reluctantly came out. Jill went to praise and pet her daughter and allow her to help pick up the yarn. Jill asked Betsy, “Do you want me to hand you this piece you’re working on?”

“No, it’s nothing important. I thought you couldn’t use that counting business on children until they were at least four.”

“I thought so, too, then I came home from an overnight trip and found Lars had taught it to her. Thank you, Emma,” she said, taking the last ball of wool from her and putting it into the bag.

Emma followed her mother back to the chair, then leaned on her lap to smile very sweetly up at her. “Cookie?” she asked.

“No. Lunch soon.”

Emma’s lower lip poked forward, then turned downward until it nearly touched her chin. Her beautiful blue eyes shone with incipient tears, but Jill only continued regarding her daughter with no show of sympathy—or anger—and Emma’s lip slowly righted itself. The child sighed and looked around for some new source of entertainment.

Betsy said, “There’s a pretty ball somewhere in this room.”

Emma brightened. “Ball?”

“It’s soft and it’s red and green and gray and blue and gold. And there’s a jingle bell inside it.” Betsy had made the ball of scraps of washable velveteen as a toy for Sophie, back when she still thought it possible to tempt the cat to exercise. It was stuffed with old panty hose, nice and squeezable, and in its middle was a tiny golden bell inside a little plastic box. Sophie had spent several weeks contentedly watching it roll by. A couple of weeks ago Betsy had come across it while cleaning out the linen closet and decided that she’d give it to Emma.