Sins and Needles (22 page)

Betsy tried for a soothing tone. “I don't think he will do anything like that, at least not right now. It's not illegal to lose and then find a knitting needle.”

“But I didn't lose it. That's what's really scary!”

“Then someone else took it and either replaced it or brought it back. Who's been in your house since you first noticed it missing?”

“Who knows? People can walk in any time they want!” Jan's voice had risen perilously high.

“Jan, Jan, calm down. Are you saying you usually leave your doors unlocked? Come on, think, talk to me. This may be important.”

“Yes, okay, I understand. All right.” There was the sound of a breath being taken. “All right,” she said again, in a quieter voice. “No, I don't leave my doors unlocked when no one is at home. Let me think. Lucille and Bobby Lee came to supper night before last. Katie came over earlier that afternoon to borrow a knitting pattern. Uncle Stewart brought her. He was taking her out to lunch, I think.”

“Did any of them have access to your sewing room while you weren't right there with them?”

“Gosh, let me think.” After a few moments, Jan said, “Well, I guess any one of them could have. Bobby Lee asked to use the bathroom—I think he really likes our bathroom. That's the second time he's been in the house, and both times he's gone up to use the bathroom. I don't think Lucille did. I sent Katie up to look for the pattern by herself. And I left Stewart alone when I went to make coffee for them. That's not much help, is it? I mean any of them could have gone up there.”

“Did Sergeant Rice ask you about someone else having access to the needles?”

“No—and I didn't think to tell him. Oh, Betsy—”

“Now Jan, don't panic. If you're really scared, call an attorney. And if you do get asked to come to the police station, don't tell anyone anything. They'll give you that spiel about your right to silence, and you say, all right, I won't talk without a lawyer present. And stick to that.”

“Oh, my God, you do think he's going to arrest me! You think I'm guilty!”

“No, I don't—” but she was speaking into a dead phone. Jan had hung up.

B
ETSY
decided she'd better check her phone messages. Besides two frantic calls from Jan, she found a message to call the shop. “Betsy,” Godwin said when he answered, “Mrs. Halloway was here a little while ago. She wants to return the knitting needles she bought last month. She's got the receipt and everything, but the needles aren't in their original packet. She says she didn't realize right away they're the wrong size. I told her I'd have to ask you.”

Betsy, savoring this chance to do something mundane and shop-related, thought a few moments. “What do you think?” she asked.

“I think she only had one project to knit on size fours and doesn't intend to have another. And I'm a little tired of her using us as a rental store.”

Betsy smiled at this confirmation of her own opinion. Mrs. Halloway was a great one for returned lightly used items, from books to gadgets. “Offer her half the purchase price, and if she takes it, put them in the table bin.” Betsy kept a wide-mouthed vase on the library table filled with items customers could try out.

“Gotcha,” said Godwin and hung up.

As Betsy went back to making her apartment presentable, she got an idea. She called Sergeant Rice at his office in Orono, but he wasn't there, of course, so she left a message asking him to call.

She had barely hung up when her doorbell rang, and she went to buzz in Lucille and Bobby Lee. They walked in with that attached-at-the-hip pose common to newlyweds—which they weren't. So perhaps they were more like the couples in the scary movies who find themselves in a large, dark forest and hear a deep rumbling from not very far away. In this case, it was Lucille being the hero, and Bobby Lee the nervous sidekick.

Betsy, trying to convince them she was not the big, bad wolf, said, “Sit down, please. May I offer you something to drink? I have Diet Pepsi, Diet Squirt, and raspberry iced tea.”

“The tea, please,” said Lucille.

“Pepsi, thank you,” said Bobby Lee, his drawl more apparent than his wife's.

Betsy filled three tall glasses with chipped ice and poured the drinks over it—she selected the tea for herself, too. She gave them their drinks and sat down in her comfortable easy chair. “What do you think of the weather we're having?” Though it was warmer than yesterday, the high today had been only in the mideighties.

Bobby Lee grinned. “Feels like the middle of November to me.”

“Doesn't it ever get cold in your part of Texas?”

“Oh, sure,” said Lucille. “Late in December or early in January we usually get some frosts—once in a while, it even snows. But it melts the next day. We did have a bad ice storm a few years back, though it was worse just up the road in Oklahoma. I like it up here like it is right now. It's very comfortable.”

“Just a little colder than back home this time of year,” said Bobby Lee, mildly venturing to disagree.

“Well, yes,” conceded Lucille. “But summer back home can be cruel. Some days my daddy used to say it was hotter than a goat in a pepper patch. I like this better; in fact, it's the oddest thing, how I feel kind of at home. Like I've returned after a long time away.”

“Not me,” said Bobby Lee. “People up here are as cold as the weather.” He pulled up his shoulders as if bracing against a chill breeze.

Betsy said, “Bobby Lee, I know just how you feel. When I first came here from San Diego, I was really struck by how cool and distant people were. But after I'd been here a while, I realized they're just as kind as people are anywhere. They just don't make a show of it.”

“It's what's called Scandinavian reserve, isn't it?” asked Lucille.

“Yes,” said Betsy with a nod. “And it takes a while to get used to.”

The pair were relaxed now, pleased to find a fellow traveler: Betsy was also—or had been—a stranger to these parts.

“Did you ever see so much water?” asked Bobby Lee. “I bet they have a flood every year. You can't drive ten minutes without coming to a lake.”

Betsy said, “We get little floods when it rains too much, but big floods are rare. The land up here is used to dealing with water. I've been told the motto on the license plates—‘10,000 Lakes'—is an understatement. Which is also typical.”

Bobby Lee snorted in wry agreement.

Lucille took a drink of her tea. “This is delicious,” she said.

But Bobby Lee put his soft drink down, indicating he'd had enough chitchat. “Why did you want to talk to us?” he asked.

As usual, Betsy was blunt. “Because I'm trying to prove that Jan didn't murder her great-aunt. I've been poking around, and I've found out some things. Unfortunately, they don't fit together in any way I can make sense of.”

“I don't see what we can do to help,” said Bobby Lee. When Lucille seemed about to speak, he overran her with, “And I'm not sure we should interfere. After all, that police detective hasn't arrested her. Maybe he doesn't think she's guilty.”

“Now, Bobby Lee, I told Betsy we'd do whatever we can to help. After all, Jan's a friend—maybe more than a friend.” She turned to Betsy. “Does Sergeant Rice really think Jan is guilty?”

“I know he strongly suspects her, but I don't think he has enough evidence to arrest her.”

“Why does he suspect her?”

“I'm not really sure. I'm not an authorized investigator, remember, so the people in charge don't have to tell me anything. That's why I'm grateful you agreed to talk to me.”

“Well, I can't believe Jan's a murderer,” said Lucille emphatically.

“Me, neither,” said Bobby Lee, but more slowly.

“Have you met her mother?” asked Betsy.

“Nope,” said Bobby Lee.

“No,” said Lucille. “I want to, but I'm scared to. I think she may be my genetic mother, but maybe she isn't. What if she is, but when I meet her, I don't like her? What if she isn't? You know, what if the genetic thing is just some kind of coincidence?”

“Are you willing to undergo a genetic test to compare your genes with hers?”

Lucille took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said, exhaling. “Because I have to know one way or the other.”

“Has Sergeant Rice asked you where you were the night Edyth Hanraty was murdered?”

“Yes,” said Lucille, “and we were in our cabin, just the two of us. Not much of an alibi.”

“Do you have a set of double-zero Skacels?”

Lucille's eyes widened. “No. That is, I used to have them. I was going to try to learn to knit lace, but it was too hard. I don't remember throwing them away, so I suppose they're somewhere in my house, but I couldn't say for sure. I haven't seen them for months—but I haven't been looking. I do know I didn't bring them with me.”

“Do you know how to pith a frog?”

Lucille's blue eyes widened, but she answered bravely, “Sure. I haven't done it since college, but it's not something you forget. I hated doing it, because you cut them open and their little heart is still beating and you don't know if they can feel what's going on. But it's what you have to do to learn what you need to know.”

Bobby Lee said, “I used to do it for her—we met in a biology class. I didn't mind it.” He made a descriptive movement with his hands. “It's not hard to do once you figure out where to stick the needle in.”

“Bobby Lee!” said Lucille.

“Yes, please don't give me any details,” said Betsy, hastily. She took a drink of her tea. “Have you been to see Edyth Hanraty's house?”

“No, of course not,” said Lucille, surprised. “Why?”

“Susan gave me a tour. It's got some fabulous things in it. Edyth Hanraty was quite a collector of antiques and art. I wonder if that taste for collecting got handed down—have you been in Jan's house?”

“Yes, just once. It's nice—nicer than ours, but not as big.”

“Oh, I think ours is plenty nice,” said Bobby Lee.

“Did she show you the whole house?” asked Betsy.

“Oh, yeah, we got what she called the Nickel Tour. She is a collector, but it's charts; she has a whole filing cabinet drawer full of them.”

“Have you met her husband?”

“Once. The three of them and the two of us went out to dinner one night. Hugs—isn't that a cute nickname?—he's real nice, and I like their boy, Ronnie, and we all got along just fine.” She looked at Bobby Lee for confirmation, and he nodded in agreement.

“Hugs is all right,” he said, “despite the nickname.”

Betsy said, “Lucille, you share a whole lot of likes and dislikes with Jan—almost as if you were identical twins separated at birth. How many of the things you say you like that Jan also likes are real, and how many did you come up with after you met her?”

Bobby Lee stood up, but before he could say anything, Lucille told him to sit down. “How did you know?” she said to Betsy.

“Well,” Betsy said, “Jan, she rattled on and on about how alike you are, and I began to wonder how two different women could compile two lists so nearly alike. You know, she was actually relieved to hear that you put some imitation bullet holes in your PT Cruiser, because she wouldn't dream of doing such a thing.”

Lucille laughed. “I remember reading that fortune tellers just listen to their customers and repeat back what they tell them, and the customers think their minds are being read. So all right, I did a little of that with Jan. When she'd say she liked fishing, I'd let on how amazed I was that I liked fishing, too.” She took a drink of her raspberry tea. “But there are some real things that we both do or like. We both love needlework, for example. And it's true that I always wanted to be a nurse like she is, but I couldn't afford the years of training. And I did always want a red PT, but we couldn't afford one.”

“Are you driving a rental?” asked Betsy.

Bobby Lee swelled up a little and said, “I won it for her in a poker game.”

Betsy got a glimpse of fear in Lucille's eyes, and a little light went on in her own head. She asked, “Bobby Lee, how long have you had a problem with gambling?”

“I don't have a problem!”

Betsy let that claim hang in the air. She sat back, sipped her tea, and waited.

Lucille looked near to tears but didn't say anything. Finally Bobby Lee said, “All right, maybe I do have a problem. But Lucille got on my case about it till I finally joined Gamblers Anonymous. I've been going to meetings, even up here. And I haven't been in a casino for almost a year. But not long back I got back into poker with some old friends. That's where I won the Cruiser, but Lucille almost made me give it back, she was so angry. Would you believe it was winning her that Cruiser that got me to quit gambling?”

Lucille said quickly, “That's true, it really is. All he ever talked about were the big pots he won, but all I could see was that there wasn't enough money to pay the bills. And I agree, somehow that PT Cruiser was the last straw. We each have a car—we have to with both of us working, and our jobs nowhere near the same place. My car was a nice little Kia, nothing to brag about, but reliable. Yes, I saw the Cruisers around and I wanted one—they're sharp and cool. But that was one of those ‘someday' wishes, y'know? ‘Someday I'm gonna have me a swimming pool. Someday I'll be able to hire a cleaning lady. Someday we'll take a trip to Hawaii.' We're still digging out of the hole he got us into with his gambling, so that ‘someday' is a long way off. He won that car off a friend of ours, and I was ashamed to speak to him next time I saw him. But it made me madder and madder, and finally I just let it all boil over and told Bobby Lee I was leaving him if he didn't quit gambling.”

“But you didn't make him give it back,” Betsy said before she could stop herself.

“No. No, I didn't. Did you ever hear how to make a dog quit killing chickens?”

“I didn't know dogs killed chickens.”

“Some do—the ones that live on a ranch. They think it's a game. Anyway, what you do is, you tie a chicken he killed around his neck and make him wear it till it rots off. He'll never kill one again.”

Betsy looked at Bobby Lee. The look on his face was so pained she nearly cried out. He said, “I was so proud to give her that Cruiser, but she made me feel like a chicken-killin' dog. That was when I hit bottom and found the only way out was up.” He smiled like it hurt his mouth. “I'd still feel like one, except Ham's wife made him join Gamblers Anonymous, too, and told us it was worth losin' the vee-hickle if it made him quit gambling.”

“That was tough love,” Lucille said. “Tough on both of us, but I'm proud of the way he came around. And in another couple-three years, we'll be out of debt.”

Betsy said, “It may be sooner than that, if you really are Susan McConnell's daughter and in line for a substantial inheritance.”

Lucille sat a moment thinking about that. Then she sighed deeply. “I almost can't think too much about that. It isn't what I came up here for, really it isn't. I just want to know where I came from.”