Sins and Needles (6 page)

“What's an amusing story?”

“How it came about. You see, my grandfather was what was called back in the twenties a capitalist. Instead of entering a profession, he played the stock market and speculated in land and was able to build that beautiful house that Aunt Edyth grew up in. He realized early on that she was never going to marry—it was as if she never got over that stage where girls think boys have cooties. Her sister, Alice, was different—she married a doctor with an established practice. And Grandfather, seeing Alice was well taken care of, decided to give Edyth the house and settle a great deal of money on her as well. He had this notion—common in his day—that a woman needed either a man or a big bank account to take care of her, you see.”

Sergeant Rice smiled at this old-fashioned notion.

Susan continued. “It turned out that Edyth inherited her father's eye for a good investment, and she turned the six hundred thousand dollars he settled on her into twenty million. But she never got over her intense dislike of the male sex and—” Susan stopped.

Sergeant Rice looked up from his notebook. “And what?” he asked, prepared to be further amused.

“Is all this pertinent? Do I need to tell you?”

He grew serious. “You don't have to tell me anything. But it really helps me to understand the family dynamics, if for no other reason than I will understand if I need to look outside the family for the person responsible for this.”

A chill went down her spine. “Do you mean you are looking at me right now as a suspect?”

“No, no, not at all! I have no reason to think you murdered your aunt!” He looked sincerely startled at the idea.

“I'm glad to hear that. Though you may change your mind when you hear about Aunt Edyth's peculiar will. You see, she made no secret of it; we all knew what it said. And all of us thought it was very unfair, even me—and by its terms I inherit a good deal of money.”

“You mean she didn't distribute the money among family members evenly.”

“I mean she disinherited my brother entirely.”

His eyebrows rose high on his forehead. “Why?”

“Because he's a man.”

“Seriously?”

“Very seriously. She left a considerable sum to the University of Minnesota to be used for scholarships for women wanting to major in business or science, and the rest was to be divided equally among the female descendants of her sister, Alice,
through the female line
. You see, that cut Stewart and his daughters right out.” Susan watched while Sergeant Rice wrote that down.

“So these female descendants get all the—what do they call it?—the rest and residue?” he asked. “Who are they?”

“There are only two of us—me and my daughter, Jan. My son gets nothing, nor does my brother Stewart—or any of his four daughters.”

“That seems unfair to those girls.”

“Exactly!” Susan gestured angrily. “We all thought that was particularly unfair.”

“Surely someone must have tried talking to her about this.”

“Of course we did! I did, Stewart did, even Katie went to her. It was no use. She was the sort of person who, once she makes up her mind, won't change it. Plus, she had this unfortunate mind-set about men.”

“But his daughters—I don't see how she could do that to them.”

“Well, they're young. The youngest is only fourteen. I'm sure Aunt Edyth was concerned that Stewart might take control of the money and use it to start a business.”

“And this would be bad because…?”

“First of all, it wouldn't have been his money.”

Sergeant Rice made a note in his little book. “Do you believe your aunt had an accurate estimation of Stewart's character?” he asked.

When Susan didn't reply, he looked up at her with a pleasantly inquiring expression. A silence fell on the room. Susan grew more and more uncomfortable, but his expression didn't change. “All right,” she said, “Aunt Edyth may have disliked all men, but she had a pretty good estimation of Stewart.”

“Has he ever taken money that didn't belong to him before?”

“Oh, heavens no! He isn't a thief. That isn't what this is about at all!”

“Then what is it about?”

“Well, she was probably afraid he'd lose the investment he'd've made on his girls' behalf. He's bright enough, he gets good ideas for a business or an invention, but he loses interest fairly quickly. He hasn't got Aunt Edyth's drive to squeeze every nickel of profit out of a business.” She sighed. “I don't think I would have minded so much, but—well, Katie's going to graduate from college next year. But Alexandra is only a sophomore, and there's Bernie and CeeCee to be sent in a few more years. And besides, Katie would like an MBA—she got a dose of the Hanraty genes.”

“Did Aunt Edyth put any conditions on your inheritance?”

“Conditions?”

“Once the money is shared out, you can do whatever you like with it?” said Rice.

“Yes, of course. But it seems unfair for those girls to have to depend on me and Jan—especially since Jan has two boys of her own to provide for.”

“Who's the executor of her will?”

“Aunt Edyth's attorney, Marcia Weiner.”

Rice made a note of that and began looking back over what he'd written. Feeling again a need to fill the silence, Susan said, “I want you to understand that Jan and I will be glad to help Stewart's girls. And, naturally, I'll give a large portion to my son.”

Rice paged forward again and then asked abruptly, “But not a portion to your brother?”

“Well, no. Aunt Edyth didn't want him to have any of her fortune.” Rice did not remark that Aunt Edyth also didn't want Jason to have any of it, either, but he did look quizzically at Susan, who continued defensively, “Anyway, Stewart's not a young man anymore, so I think he's pretty much used up all his chances at building a fortune from any investment I might make in him.”

Rice cocked his head at her. “How old is he?”

“Fifty-seven.”

“Your older brother, then.”

She drew an indignant breath—she didn't like false flattery—then saw he was making a joke, and let it out with a smile. “No, as a matter of fact, he's nearly ten years younger than I am.”

He did look authentically surprised by that. Susan smiled. Genuine flattery she did enjoy.

He smiled back, then went back two pages in his notebook. “Now Alice, Edyth's sister, your mother. She's deceased, you said?”

“That's right, and my father as well. He was a doctor, well-known in the cardiac field, so it isn't as if we've been sitting around impoverished and impatient to get at Aunt Edyth's money. My late husband did very well for himself, and my children are doing well also.”

“But not your brother Stewart.”

She jumped at this opportunity to say something nice about him. “Oh, it's not as if they're living in a slum or anything like that! It's—it's more like in comparison. He and his wife own a nice house, and she's a high school principal, so they're doing just fine. Stewart always did march to his own drummer, and he seems happy, so…”

“So?”

She blurted, “So there's no need to go looking in his direction for a suspect.” He looked surprised at the strength of her assertion, and she smiled to soften it. “You're going to have to do what you said, look outside the family.” She grimaced. “Funny, talking about the family made me almost forget this is a murder case. How awful. I hope you catch whoever did this.”

“I do, too.” He made a final note and closed his little tablet. “I want to thank you for your cooperation,” he said, rising.

She showed him to the door and then hurried to the phone to tell her daughter not to worry about the policeman going around asking questions.

T
HE
receptionist came back to the exam room to give Jan a jolt of déjà vu: “Your mother is on the phone. She says it's urgent.”

“Thanks, Char. I'll be in Doctor's office.”

Though the office belonged to Jan's husband, she used the traditional nurse's term, calling him “Doctor” as if that were his first name.

She retreated to Hugs's tiny private office, with its stacks of paper, books, file folders, X-rays, medical advertisements, and other detritus, then dug out the receiver on a half-buried phone and punched line 2. “Hi, Mom. What's up?”

“A policeman was just here,” said her mother, but instead of sounding alarmed, she sounded mildly excited, as if she had good news.

Jan felt enormous relief. “What did he want?” she asked.

“Well,” sighed her mother, “that's the bad news: Aunt Edyth was murdered.”

Jan fell into her husband's desk chair. “You mean the mortician was right? From the way you were talking I thought the policeman came to say it wasn't so! So what
did
he want?”

“He's investigating, of course, trying to find out who might have done such a dreadful thing. He was very nice to me, a nice man altogether, which brings me to the good news: He's Lizzy Rice's husband!”

As was not unusual when talking with her mother, Jan felt her brain begin to spin. “So what?” she blurted.

“Well, don't you see? He actually knew my Marc Saastad roses were counted cross-stitch!”

The spinning continued. Jan gripped the receiver as if it were the single solid object in a too-fluid reality. “I'm afraid I still don't understand.”

“Darling, he's one of
us
! He understands that we're nice people, people who don't go about murdering one another. He really
understands
.”

“Oh. That's good. I'm so glad you had a meeting of the minds.”

“That's exactly
right
,” declared her mother, oblivious to Jan's sarcasm. “He was so easy to talk to, he realizes how upset we were over Aunt Edyth's peculiar will. He even understood about Stew.”

Jan's brain stopped whirling the instant her heart sank into her shoes. She asked in a voice that only vaguely resembled her own, “What did you tell him about Uncle Stewart?”

Suddenly aware of Jan's tone, her mother became defensive. “I only said what Aunt Edyth used to say. That he's not good with money, and that if his daughters were given a share of her money he would find a way to take some of it and lose it on bad business ventures.”

“Did you say that as if you agreed with her assessment?”

“But I
do
agree with it! You know very well—”

Jan interrupted her as a new thought intruded. “So he knows Uncle Stewart doesn't get any of the money.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Did you tell him how much money was at stake?”

“No, because nobody knows how much the total will be.”

“But you told him it was substantial.”

“I…I don't remember.” She was definitely beginning to sound defensive now.

“What else did you tell him?”

“Well, he wanted to know about the family, so I gave him a kind of genealogy. I told him everyone's name and how they were related—you know, you and Hugs and the boys and Stewart and Terri and the girls. You can't find any objection to that, surely. And yes, that's right, I did tell him that Stewart couldn't possibly be a suspect because he was not in Aunt Edyth's will.” Amusement crept back into her voice. “I asked him if that meant he would be looking slant-wise at
me
, and he said of course not—he has no reason to think I'm a murderer.”

“What did you say about me?”

“What about you?”

“Well, you told him that the two of us are sharing the part of Aunt Edyth's fortune that she doesn't give to the U of M, right?”

“Well,” Susan replied, “I explained how strange and unfair Aunt Edyth's will was, and yes, that of all the family, only you and I would share the money she didn't give to the university.”

“So if he agrees that Uncle Stewart has no motive and he's sure you didn't murder her for her money, that kind of leaves
me
twisting in the wind, doesn't it?”

“Janice Margaret McConnell Henderson!”

“Yes?” Jan replied in her sweetest voice, tinged just the merest bit with acid.

“
Why
—why on
earth
do you think I would for one second allow the police to suspect you, my own daughter, of
murder
?”

“I don't think you did it on purpose. I think you were just so enchanted by this policeman's being one of us that you weren't thinking very clearly.”

“I didn't do it at all! Your name just didn't come into it!”

“But he will deduce that! Oh, Mother, because he had nice manners and is married to a friend of yours, you forgot he is a police detective looking for a murderer. You thought that because he could identify cross-stitching when he saw it that he was on your side. He's
not
on your side, Mother.”

“But darling, he said he would be looking outside the family for suspects, not at us.”

“In so many words?”

“Yes, in exactly that many words. I don't see why you're in such a snit over this.”

“Oh, I don't know, either, I guess. It was so awful finding her dead, I think I'm still upset over that. And then to find she was actually murdered—!”

“I understand. It's enough to frighten anyone. But take a minute, dearest, and just breathe quietly. Let your mind settle. You'll be all right. Everything will be all right.”

This was the kind of language Mother used when Jan would waken from nightmares as a child, and it soothed her now to hear her mother's quiet voice.

“All right, I'm feeling better now. Thank you, Mother.”

“Call me later if you start feeling anxious again.”

“I will.” Jan hung up and sat down to weep quietly for a few minutes.

Half an hour later the little receptionist came by again to report another urgent phone call.

“Is it my mother again?” asked Jan.

“No, it's your uncle Stewart.”

Jan sighed and went back to Doctor's cluttered little office.

“Do you know your mother called me to say Aunt Edyth was murdered?” Stewart demanded, almost squeaking in his distress. Since his normal voice was a baritone, this squeak nearly moved Jan to laughter. But she took a calming breath before replying, “Yes, I know. She talked to me, too.”

“I don't understand. Why do they think it's murder?”

“The medical examiner found some little thing in her head, something metal.”

“What are you talking about, something metal?”

“I think they don't know what it is. Or maybe they do. Mother wasn't very clear. A pin, maybe, or a nail. Why don't you call her and ask? The police were just over there.”

He said plaintively, “I can't call her. You know Susan and I don't get along! You're the one who found her—you
must
know more about it! When was this ‘murder' supposed to have happened?”

“Well, I went over there Sunday morning before ten, but she'd been dead for hours. They did the autopsy yesterday, and today the police are going around asking questions.”

“Have they talked to you?”

“Not yet.”

“What will you tell them?”

“How do I know until I hear the questions?” Jan was starting to feel abused.

“I don't understand about the pin. How can a pin be used to kill someone? Oh, wait, you mean it was stuck in her ear? I think the Mafia used to kill people by sticking piano wires in their ears.”

“No, I heard it was stuck in her skull somehow. Like a nail, except it isn't a nail.”

“What? He saw it sticking out?”

“No, Mother said the undertaker said he felt it under her hair when he was doing something with the body. So he called somebody—the police I guess—and they ordered the autopsy.”

Jan worked her shoulders to stop the chill flickering between them like summer lightning. Aunt Edyth on a mortician's slab, with a stranger's gloved hands on her; Aunt Edyth being cut open by a medical examiner. Jan had attended an autopsy as part of her nurse's training, and it was one of the most difficult things she'd ever endured. The thought of him opening poor Aunt Edyth's head—ick, ick, ick!

“Uncle Stewart, I can't talk anymore. I'm at work. I've got things to do. I suspect the police will be calling on you pretty soon. Maybe you can ask them to explain it to you.”

Jan hung up and took several calming breaths. Uncle Stewart was going to be a terrible nuisance until this was over. She wished—as she had wished before—that he and her mother could get along. It would be nice to sic him on Mother. There were times when he was a real pest.

But as her annoyance faded, she began to smile. Annoying as he could be, she'd adored Uncle Stewart all her life, from the day he'd sneaked her off to the circus when her mother had expressly said she wasn't to go. She'd come home with a balloon and a tummy ache, thrilled to the core from all the exotica she'd seen and the forbidden sweets she'd eaten.

Stewart had been a charming but naughty little boy, then a charming but naughty adult, and now he was turning into a charming but naughty old man. Apparently, he'd been devoutly wished for by Grandmother and Grandfather and arrived only after years of yearning—interesting that miscarriages ran through the family, thought Jan, wandering into a sidebar. Mother had lost babies, Jan strongly suspected, and so had she. But one result was that Stewart's youth had been spent in a cocoon of indulgence that had left him unprepared for the cold, hard real world. He was a college dropout who had never held a job for more than a few years, and he had mooched shamelessly off his sister until, in despair, she had slammed the door on him—literally, according to both of them, though in very different versions. Mother had been hoping he would finally grow up. Uncle Stewart had seen it as a betrayal of an unspoken agreement. The problem was, by the time the door slammed, it was too late; nothing could change his behavior. Soon after, he'd married a woman he'd been halfheartedly courting. He had thought she was wealthy and indulgent—and she was—a dangerous combination to a man of his boundless ability to squander. She, too, had finally closed the spigot, but only when they were down to a few income-producing investments and a nice lakefront house that she kept adamantly in her own name. Fortunately, she had a good job as a high school principal, which kept them solvent. Stewart made a very good house husband, though Jan sometimes wondered if Terri liked her job as bread winner.

But maybe she was content. Jan had never heard her complain.

There was something sweetly helpless about Stewart that made his friends, especially the female ones, muffle the alarms that sounded when he came asking for yet another loan. He was always cheerful about loans; asking politely and, in this new world of less cash in the pocket, willing to walk around the corner with his victim to the ATM machine, telling a funny story on the way. And unlike most moochers, he hung around after, grateful and ever ready to do favors. He would fetch and carry, clean up, or jury-rig—he was, not surprisingly, talented at making an old car or toy or piece of furniture serve one more turn. One thing he rarely did: repay the loan.

Jan was as susceptible as anyone to her uncle's charms. She loved his deprecation and self-aggrandizing, even when she knew both were often merely strategy. And too often she had succumbed to his hints that she should forget the laundry, abandon her husband and sons, and go fishing with him—using her boat, her gas, her bait.

Even now, past his midfifties, there was something elfin about him. He'd shrug up his shoulders, wink, and look around as if for eavesdroppers, then suggest they sneak off for a drive, maybe stop for a sandwich and beer at this out-of-the-way place he'd heard about.

Jan smiled to remember all the crimes and misdemeanors they'd committed together. As recently as two weeks ago, he'd come around needing “one of those yuppie foodstamps,” meaning a twenty, because he'd gotten a bargain on cold cereal and what good were half a dozen boxes of Frosted Flakes without milk? She'd long gotten past expecting him to repay any of the money he'd gotten off her, nodding at his usual earnest declaration that one day he'd pay her back all he owed. They both knew better.

But now there was a new element. Jan didn't know the total of Aunt Edyth's estate, but she knew it was millions of dollars, with maybe as much as ten million to share with Mother, even after her other bequests. As soon as it was hers, Uncle Stewart—the man with his hand ever out—would be right there. And this time he'd want a lot more than a couple of yuppie foodstamps.