Sins and Needles (9 page)

Rice pressed her a bit. “And, of course, if she had changed her will, you wouldn't be inheriting as much money.”

Jan smiled ruefully. “That's true. And having a lot of money is nice—if only because I can leave big hunks of it to my two sons.” Her smile thinned with stubbornness, and Rice reflected that here might be a chip off the old block, as determined to give money to her male heirs as her aunt had been determined to deny it to them.

“May I ask you to show me something?” he asked.

Her eyes widened the least bit. “What is it?”

“Your collection of knitting needles.”

“Why would you want to see them?” She seemed genuinely puzzled.

“I want to compare them to something.”

“All right.” She rose and left the room, but returned promptly with what looked like a roll of thick cloth in one hand. The roll was held closed with a narrow cloth band tied in a bow. He smiled; his wife had one of these, too. Needle cases, they were called.

She pulled the bow loose and unrolled it, a double-thickness of light blue cloth with clear plastic pockets sewn onto one side of it. In the pockets were an assortment of knitting needles, the thickest at one end, dwindling by size to very thin at the other. The pockets shortened down the row so the tops of the needles always protruded. “Is this what you wanted to look at?”

“Yes,” he said, and pulled the thin packet of Skacels from an inside pocket. “Do you have some of these?”

She leaned forward to check the size printed on the packet. “Certainly.” She went to the second-smallest size and pulled out the little handful, frowning as soon as she touched them. “That's funny.”

“What?”

“I thought I had six of these, but there are only five.” She counted them quickly. “That's right, there are only five here. How odd.”

“Are you using some of them?” he asked.

“Yes, one pair. I buy the same brand as you have in your hand, Skacels, which come four in a packet. I had two sets of four, and two needles are currently in use, so that means there should be six here. I can't imagine where the one missing might have gone.”

“Suppose I told you it was a knitting needle like one of these that killed your aunt?”

“It couldn't be. Look at them—they're eight inches long. It would have been noticed.”

“Noticed?”

“Sticking out…” She gestured. “Behind.” He could feel her revulsion in talking about this.

“Maybe it wasn't stuck in behind, but, say, in an ear. Or up her nose.”

She looked at him, wanting to challenge him, but not sure if she should.

“What?” he asked.

“Please don't play games with me.” She looked about to burst into tears.

He put on his most disingenuous smile. “Games?”

She stood. “I think this conversation is over.”

He leaned back, looking up at her. “All right, okay. I'm sorry. The reason I think the weapon was one of these knitting needles is because they look very much like a fragment that was recovered from your aunt's body.”

“You mean from her head.”

“Yes.”

“It was put into the back of my aunt's head just above the first vertebra.”

“How do you know that?” he asked, a trifle too sharply.

She sat down. “Because my mother told me.”

“Who told her that?” the detective asked.

“The medical examiner.”

Rice mentally cursed the ME and said, “He told her it was stuck in the back of her head?” He reached back to touch his head just below the crown.

“He didn't say just where, but I pithed more than a few frogs in college, so I know where the needle goes. You can't stick it through the solid bone, and if it had gone into an eye or ear or nose, someone would have seen it. Mr. Huber found it when it scratched his finger, which means he didn't see it, either.” She shrugged casually, but she was well aware of his intense interest. “I figure the murderer didn't pull it out for some reason, but perhaps bent it back and forth until it broke, or ruined a pair of scissors cutting it off. In any case, it didn't break off flush with her skin. He thought her night braid would hide it—and it did, until Mr. Huber scratched his finger on it. So I conclude it was pushed into Aunt Edyth's brain stem. Which would call for some medical knowledge.” She looked away, but continued bravely, “And here, heir to a great deal of money in Aunt Edyth's will, sits Jan Henderson, RN.”

“Did you murder your aunt?”

“Great-aunt. No, I did not.”

“Have you any idea who did?”

She sighed. “No.”

“Might your mother have done this?”

“No, of course not!”

“How about your uncle, Stewart O'Neil?”

“He's not a doctor. And anyway, why would he? He gets zip from Aunt Edyth.”

“Your husband?”

She smiled. “No, not Hugs, not for all the money in the world. I think it must be someone outside the family.”

“Like who? Who had a grudge against your great-aunt?”

“I don't know. She never said anything—but she wouldn't. She was not one to complain or explain or gossip.”

“Where were you last Friday evening?”

“Here at home. But I was in my sewing room with strict instructions no one was to disturb me. I didn't realize how tired I was and fell asleep in my chair and didn't come to bed until around two a.m.”

He made another note,
check braid
, and rose, this time with finality. “I won't keep you any longer,” he said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

 

J
AN
called Hugs and told him the interview was over, but she wasn't coming in. “I'm too upset to come in. Oh, hon, he thinks the murder weapon was a double-zero knitting needle, and there's one missing from my kit, and I can't explain why.”

There was such a long silence on the other end of the wire that at last she said, “Are you still there?”

“Yes, darlin',” he replied. “You don't have any idea where you lost the odd one?”

“Not the least idea. You know how careful I am of my needles.”

Again a long silence. Then a gusty exhalation. “I don't like this.”

She wailed, “Well, neither do I! I can't explain it, I can't think how it happened! What are we going to do?”

“What did he say?”

“Not much. He didn't seem, you know,
focused
on me.”

“All right, maybe that's good. But still, I'm calling George tonight. I think it's time we got some legal advice.”

George Markasite was the family lawyer. “All right.”

After she hung up, Jan walked around the house, top to bottom, touching familiar things and trying to think. But it was no good. There was really nothing to be done right now. She called her best friend, Martine, who wasn't home, and left a message, then decided to try her new friend from Texas, Lucille. “Are you busy?” she asked.

“I'm on vacation, remember? I'm trying to knit with that flame yarn, and it's really hard, because you can't see what you're doing. If you're offering me a reason to quit, I'm yours.”

“I need a break. I had a disturbing conversation a little while ago, and I want to not think about it for a while. Can you come get me and not ask me any questions for an hour or two?”

“I guess so.”

“No, no guessing. Promise we'll just go shopping and talk.”

“But since I don't know what disturbed you, how will I know what not to say?”

“If I say, ‘enough, friend,' change the subject.”

“Sure, I can do that. See you in fifteen minutes.”

I
T
was nearly two. Betsy was, Godwin knew, over at Antiquity Rose finishing her half-sandwich and a cup—not a bowl—of soup. This was so she could have a slice of pie for dessert. She would bring Godwin a turkey sandwich with potato chips and a length of pickle. His stomach responded enthusiastically to that thought, the greedy, impatient old thing.

The door sounded its two electronic notes, and Godwin came out from the back of the store, where he'd been putting a model of one of John Clayton's beautiful young women on the wall. He saw a short, chesty man, whose big white sideburns flanked a face trying, not very successfully, to look cordial.

“Well, Joe Mickels!” exclaimed Godwin. “I haven't seen you in here for a long while!”

Mickels's grin was as false as his teeth. “Well, Mr. DuLac,” he said, “the very person I was looking for.”

“Me? What did you want to see me about?”

“I was hoping to buy you lunch.”

Godwin was speechless for a moment. Mickels, a very wealthy man, had gotten that way by never spending a dime more than desperately necessary. “You're kidding!” Godwin said before he could stop himself.

Mickels scowled. “Why would I kid you about that?”

“Well, I'm not the owner here, and to my knowledge, you have never tried needlework, so what are you trying to get on my good side for?”

“I'm not trying to get on any side of you. I'm trying to do us both a favor. I want to talk to you about the money you're taking in.”

“What, you mean here?” Godwin looked around the shop. Some years back, when Joe owned the building Crewel World was in, he had made a serious attempt to force the closure of the shop, intending to tear down the whole place and put up a high-rise. Thwarted, he ended up selling the building to Betsy. Collecting rent on the other two stores, and rents from the other two apartments upstairs (Betsy stayed in the third herself ), Crewel World, Inc., was making just about enough to pay Godwin's salary, plus upkeep and taxes.

Joe said impatiently, “I'm talking about
you
, son. Have you thought about taking the money you inherited from your attorney friend and making it work for you?”

“Oh. That money.”

Mickels turned his head a little sideways. “What, didn't you get it yet?”

“Oh, yes, probate's all finished now.” Godwin couldn't help smiling, now that he knew what Mickels was after. He broadened his smile. He wondered what story Joe would tell. Would it be a chance to invest in a South American gold mine? An African diamond mine? An Idaho oil well? Florida real estate? “Betsy is bringing me my lunch today,” he said. “How about tomorrow?”

Joe checked his watch. “I already had my lunch today. I was thinking tomorrow. You always eat this late?”

“Sure. We often get customers on their lunch hour, so we eat afterwards.”

“All right, I'll pick you up here tomorrow at two on the dot.” He turned and walked out.

 

G
ODWIN
was so cock-a-hoop when Betsy came back from lunch that he was nearly incoherent. It took her a minute to understand what he was so pleased about.

“Why is it good news that Joe Mickels is taking you to lunch tomorrow?” she asked.

“He wants me to come in with him on some kind of deal.”

“You aren't going to agree to it, surely!” said Betsy, alarmed.

Godwin said loftily, “I don't know. It can't hurt to listen, can it?”

“When the proposal is coming from Joe Mickels, it might!”

“You still don't get it, do you? He won't stay interested—the income from my trust fund isn't enough to interest Joe!”

“So why is he courting you?”

“
Courting
me?” Godwin stared at her, then began to laugh. “Oh, that's too rich! If anyone heard you say that—Oh, that's too funny!”

“Goddy…” Betsy said in a chilly voice.

Godwin understood that tone and brought his amusement under control, though his eyes still twinkled. “You see,” he said, “Joe doesn't know I have a spendthrift trust.” Godwin, an eternal grasshopper, spent all he earned. He could not access the principal in his trust fund and received the interest on it in the form of a monthly check. He continued, “All Joe knows is that I inherited a chunk of money from John. He sees poor, little, ignorant,
trusting
me with a pocketful of cash and wants to ‘help' me invest it where it will do both of us a lot of good. He wants to talk to me about it over lunch. I'll go, and I'll listen, and I bet I can get him to buy me dinner, too.”

“Don't do that. He'll be angry when he finds out—”

Godwin interrupted. “So what? I can take it. Serve him right, thinking he's so smart. You did it to him, but that was a while ago, and another serving of humble pie will be good for the old fellow.”

Betsy didn't think so. She tried to convince Godwin but was making no progress doing so when the door sounded its two notes. Jan and Lucille came in together, deep in conversation.

Betsy knew they were speaking English because they used words like
for, the,
and
can,
but she couldn't understand much more than that.
Mitochondrial
and
autosomal dominant
and
karyotype
were only some of the terms they used, but they were deeply interested by whatever they meant.

In fact, they came into the center of the shop before Lucille stopped short and said, “Why are we here?”

Jan laughed. “Because you wanted to show me those Lucci yarns you almost bought the other day.”

“Oh. Yes, that's right.”

Godwin led them to the display of exotic yarns that had been ordered at the Columbus Market a few weeks ago.

“Oooh, look at this!” said Jan, taking down a skein. It seemed at first to be pastel-colored ribbon yarn, but was, in fact, thin nylon braid with “tags” of pastel-colored ribbons fastened at intervals.

“And this!” exclaimed Lucille taking down a fuzzy black yarn whose “fuzz” was extra long and curly. “It's called ostrich feather. Isn't that cute?” She turned it over twice and blew on the fuzz. “You know, I bet a boa made of this really would look like ostrich feathers.”

But Jan had taken down a skein of what looked like miniature rickrack in a dense yellow. “Hmmmm,” she murmured, “this would make a darling sweater and cap for Katie's baby. It's due in six weeks. I can finish a project like that in that amount of time.”

“
It?
Don't they know if it's a boy or a girl?”

“No, they decided they didn't want to know. Her doctor did an amniotic test and found no genetic problems. Of course the test also tells the gender, but they asked him not to tell.”

Godwin would have stayed to help, or at least continue to eavesdrop, but Shelly came in right then, wanting to see if the new Brenda Franklin charts had come in. Godwin had been working on a big pattern by that designer, and Shelly wanted to work it, too. He was trying to get Shelly to teach a class using one of her smaller designs. He took out the yellow lab and Egyptian sampler charts and sat down with Shelly at the library table in the middle of the shop to discuss it.

So Betsy came to where Jan and Lucille were fondling the yarn and found it easier to overhear the rest of their conversation.

“Have you ever noticed a pattern of heritability to spontaneous abortions in your patients?” Lucille was asking. Then she noticed Betsy. “I'll take this,” she said, handing over three skeins of the ostrich plume yarn.

“Sometimes,” said Jan.

“See, I'm paid to find a genetic reason for that. Plus, I've had several myself,” Lucille said as a shadow passed over her face.

Jan said, “Actually, I know my mother lost several babies between my brother and me, and from the way my grandparents spoiled Stewart—and the years of difference in age between him and my mother—I'm pretty sure my grandmother had the same problem. They never talked about it in front of me when I was young, of course, so when I started having late and painful periods every so often, I thought I was developing endometriosis, and even Hugs was surprised when my doctor told me it was early stage spontaneous abortions. So it runs in my family; that's why Hugs insisted Katie's doctor test her fetus. I'm so lucky I got my two boys.” She paused to hand Betsy four skeins of the yellow rickrack yarn. “I'll take these, thanks.”

“This way, please,” said Betsy, leading the way to the checkout.

“You know,” Jan said, as she followed Betsy, “one reason I became a nurse was because Mother had another baby, a girl, after me. I was about four when she was born, and she had all kinds of problems. My earliest memories are of being warned to be very careful around Julie because she was frail. She was born with a cleft palate, but even after it was repaired, she didn't really thrive. She lived to be three, but she never learned to walk or talk, and every time she caught a cold, she ended up in the hospital. I wanted to take care of her, but I didn't know how, and that pushed me to become a nurse, so I could learn how to take care of sick, frail babies.”

Lucille put her arms around Jan. “You are the sweetest thing!”

Jan pulled back and snorted. “You think so? You've never seen me with a child who won't let Doctor look in his ears!” She looked away, her face pensive. “My mother learned a lot about taking care of frail babies, poor thing, so she was pleased when I went into nursing. We used to talk about what I was learning. Our talk even influenced Uncle Stew; he took some pre-med classes but quit when he had to pith his first frog.”

“Ugh. That's what kept me out of nursing! All that messing around with innards. I can take stinks, and even blood, but I hate insides!”

Betsy hated to interrupt, but Shelly looked to be winding things up with Godwin, who would want to use the cash register. “That will be seventeen fifty, please, Mrs. Jones,” she said. “And Jan, yours comes to twenty-four dollars even.”

Jan opened her purse. “Have you ever been tested to see if it's a genetic problem?” Lucille asked her.

“Well, of course it's genetic, if it runs in the family,” said Jan with an air of stating the obvious.

“No, I mean to see what the problem is, specifically. Like, I don't know, a balanced translocation or something.”

“No, why? Is there anything that can be done?”

“Well, if you can afford in vitro fertilization, they can check the embryos before they implant and only use the healthy ones. That's called pre-implantation diagnosis, and it wasn't even possible until after my daughter was born. By the time she starts having problems, I hope they will have found something easier and less expensive.” Lucille handed a credit card to Betsy.

“Is that what your problem is? A ‘balanced translocation'?”

“Yes. Not that we could have afforded the test ourselves. But when I was in school, we performed all kinds of tests, and I was using my own blood when we ran a cytogenetics test. And it turned up a balanced translocation on eight and nine. My teacher said it didn't mean anything bad—well, except I might have problems carrying babies to term. And I sure did.”

“Isn't that odd how you found out?” remarked Jan. “I wasn't as lucky—though when I was in nursing school, I always thought I had whatever disease we were learning about that week. My med-school husband got really tired of that—until it turned out I really did have mono.”

They laughed and signed their credit card slips, then left, still talking medicine.

 

T
HE
next day featured a fine mist driven by a sharp wind from the north. The temperature at opening time—ten a.m.—was sixty-three degrees. Betsy hustled around, rearranging stock, putting out the new “When I Am Old” sampler with its gorgeous flowers and red hat border, starting the coffeemaker. Betsy offered free hot coffee to her customers, and she suspected many more than usual would take her up on it today.

Godwin came in shivering, shaking water off his khaki hat out the door behind his back, then doing the same with his beautiful Burberry raincoat. “Global warming indeed!” he growled, and went to stand impatiently by the coffeemaker.

Betsy had barely gotten the radio going, tuned to a soft jazz station—NPR was playing music as gloomy as the day—when the door sounded, and she rose to greet Lucille.

“Betsy, honey, can I talk with you?” The wheedling tone in Lucille's voice was overlaid with concern.

“Certainly,” said Betsy, aware this was something more than a worry about knit socks or flame-colored yarn. “But if you need privacy, you'll have to wait until I go to lunch.”

“No, no, this can't wait. It's about Jan.”