"A Murderous Yarn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferris Monica)

1

Spring came early to Excelsior that year. Everyone remarked that there had been no hard freezes since the fifth of March. The ice on Lake Minnetonka was rotten and great puddles gleamed like quicksilver on it. It was not yet St. Patrick’s Day but the robins were back, mourning doves were sobbing, and daffodils budded in south-facing flower beds. Only yesterday, Betsy had been delighted to find a great wash of purple crocuses pushing through the flat layers of dead leaves on the steep, tree-strewn slope behind her apartment building.

She had noticed the rich purple color while taking out the trash. It had been the one good thing about the task. On that same trip, her vision downward blocked by boxes and black plastic bags, she had nearly fallen into one of the yawning potholes that menaced traffic in her small parking lot. And she’d had to put everything down while she struggled with the Dumpster’s creaking lid, so rusted around the hinges it resisted being lifted.

How wonderful it would be, she had thought, to bring the trash out to the front sidewalk on Wednesdays for someone else to pick up and carry away. Even better, to dig up the crumbled blacktop parking lot, put in some topsoil, and plant tulips and bleeding hearts and old-fashioned varieties of roses, the kind whose scent lay heavy on the air in summer. And at the back, a row of benches under trellises covered alternately with honeysuckle and morning glories, to draw butterflies and hummingbirds. She’d stood beside the homely Dumpster for a minute, inhaling imaginary sweet-smelling air.

But her tenants’ leases promised each a parking space and a container to put their refuse in any day of the week. She had been dismayed to discover how expensive it was to rent the Dumpster, and to have it emptied weekly. And by the estimate for resurfacing the parking lot. Being a landlord wasn’t solely about collecting rents.

Now, the next morning, she sighed over her abysmal willingness to leap into things without first learning the consequences. She should have let Joe keep this moldy old building with its leaky roof, potholed parking lot, and rusty Dumpster. It was enough trouble keeping her small needlework shop from bankruptcy.

Her cat interrupted her musings by asking “A-row?” from a place between Betsy and the door. Was it time to go to work? the cat wanted to know. Sophie liked the needlework shop and yearned to spend even more hours in it. Up here, she got a little scoop of Iams Less Active twice a day. Down in the shop, ah, in the shop were potato chips and fragments of chocolate bars and who knew what other treats. Only this last Saturday, she’d garnered a paw-size hunk of bagel spread with strawberry cream cheese, which she’d sneaked into the back room and eaten to the last crumb-a pleasant victory, since her mistress had a distressing habit of snatching delicacies away before the cat got more than one tooth into them. Sophie weighed twenty-two pounds and was as determined to hang on to every ounce as her mistress was to make her svelte.

Yesterday, Sunday, the shop had been closed. Sophie had not had so much as a corner of dry toast. Now, when Betsy put her empty tea mug into the sink, Sophie hurried ahead to the door.

They went down the stairs to the ground floor, around to an obscure door near the back wall, through it, and down a narrow hallway to the back door into the shop. Sophie waited impatiently for her mistress to unlock the door.

Godwin was already in the shop. To Sophie’s delight, he had a greasy, cholesterol-laden bacon and egg McMuffin. He was seated at the library table with it and a mug of coffee. While Betsy put the startup cash in the register, Sophie quietly went to touch him on the left shin to let him know where she was. As quietly, Godwin dropped a small piece of buttered muffin with a bit of egg clinging to it, confident it would never touch the carpet.

“Hey, Goddy!” said Betsy, slamming the drawer shut.

“Hmmm?” he said, startled into a too-perfect look of innocence.

“Remind me to call that blacktop company again this morning, will you?”

“Certainly,” he said, and when she began to check an order he’d made out, he dropped another morsel.

An hour later, Betsy was putting together a display of small kits consisting of a square of tan or pale green linen; lengths of green, pink, yellow, wine, dark gold, and brown floss; a pattern of tulips in a basket; and a needle. She had made up the kits herself, putting each into a clear plastic bag with daffodils printed on it, tied shut with curly yellow ribbon. She was arranging the kits, priced at seven dollars, in a pretty white basket beside a pot of real tulips and a finished model of the pattern, still in its little Q-snap holder. A stack of little Q-snaps, which had been selling poorly, waited suggestively close to the basket.

Godwin, meanwhile, had clamped a Dazor magnifying light to the library table in the middle of the shop, and was fastening the electric cord to the carpet with long strips of duct tape.

At home on Sunday, Betsy had put together another little basket with illustrations of various stitches, threaded needles, and an assortment of fabrics, so that customers could try these things before buying, or get Godwin’s help in doing an elaborate needlepoint stitch. The Dazor was there to help them see more clearly-and if the customer was delighted at how bright and clear things appeared under the Dazor, Betsy had several of the lights all boxed up in the back room.

Betsy had recently visited Zandy’s in Burnsville, where the owner had a similar setup. Zandy had told Betsy that she sold at least one Dazor a month. Betsy had sold two Dazors since she took over Crewel World nine months ago. Even at wholesale, the lights were expensive and a burden on the shop’s inventory.

Godwin stood up with a grunt, and brushed a fragment of dust from his beautiful lightweight khaki trousers. “That should keep people from tripping,” he said. “What’s next?”

“Pat Ingle brought a model to me in church on Sunday,” said Betsy. “Here it is. We’ll need to find space for it on the wall in back.”

“Oh, it’s The Finery of Nature!” said Godwin, going to look. “Gosh, look at it! Seeing it for real makes me wish I did counted cross stitch myself!”

And that was the purpose of models. Crewel World sold all kinds of needlework, but counted cross stitch patterns needed, more than any other, the impact of the finished product to inspire needleworkers to buy. Betsy had devoted the entire back of her shop to cross-stitch, and the walls there were covered with framed models. But as new patterns arrived and old ones went out of print, a steady trickle of new models was needed.

Betsy used a variety of methods to keep the walls up to date. One was to stitch them herself, but Betsy was still learning the craft and so had to lean heavily on her customers, borrowing finished patterns from them. Sometimes she offered a particularly talented customer free finishing-washing, stretching, and framing, an expensive service-in exchange for the right to display it for a time, or to giving the model maker the materials for a project, plus deep discounts on other patterns and materials, in exchange for doing a particular project.

She had also gained some recent models by a sadder method: Wayzata’s Needle Nest had gone out of business, and Pat had sold Betsy some of her models to hang on Crewel World’s walls. Fineries of Nature was the last of them.

It was a little after noon when Betsy, looking over a new and complex Terrance Nolan pattern, said, “I wonder if we could get Irene to make a model of this for us.”

And as if on cue, the front door went Bing! and Irene came in. Irene Potter was one of Betsy’s most loyal customers. She was also rude, opinionated, passionate, difficult-and an extraordinarily talented needleworker. A short, thin woman with angry black curls standing up all over her head, she had a narrow face set with very shiny dark eyes. Her clothing came from a Salvation Army store. She wasn’t poor, but she put every possible nickel of her income into needlework supplies.

She had a project rolled up under the arm of her shabby winter coat, a faux leopard skin probably thirty years old. “I need your opinion on this,” she said without preamble.

“What, on how to finish it?” asked Betsy from behind the big desk that served as a checkout counter.

“No, just an opinion. Yours too,” she added over her shoulder, not quite looking at Godwin. This was unusual. Irene had a very accurate notion of Betsy’s lack of proficiency but her fear and loathing of Godwin as a gay man normally kept her from acknowledging his expertise in needlework. That most other Crewel World customers thought he had a heightened sense of color and design because he was gay cut no ice with Irene.

Godwin, making a comedy of his surprise behind Irene’s back, smoothed his face to impassivity as he came to stand beside Betsy. Irene took a deep breath, held it, and unrolled the fabric onto the desk.

Betsy stared; Godwin inhaled sharply. It was an impressionistic painting of a city in a blizzard. The snow blew thickly around the buildings and people, blurring their outlines and the shape of a tall plinth in the center of a square.

But the picture wasn’t a painting. It was a highly detailed piece of cross-stitching. “Why, it’s wonderful!” exclaimed Betsy. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Where did you get the pattern, Irene?”

“It’s not from a pattern,” said Irene. “Martha took me to see the exhibit of American Impressionists at the Art Museum last year. I never could see what was so great about Impressionists; those posters and pictures in magazines look like a mess. But prints are nothing like seeing Impressionist paintings for real.”

Betsy nodded. “That’s absolutely true, Irene. I didn’t get Impressionism either, when all I’d seen were prints. Then I saw my first van Gogh in person and I fell in love. Did you see the Art Museum’s exhibit, Goddy?”

“M-hmm.” He seemed very absorbed in Irene’s piece, moving a step sideways and back, cocking his head at various angles.

Betsy continued, “I don’t know why photographs can’t tell the truth about Impressionist paintings. Do you, Godwin?”

“It’s because they use layers of paint, or lay it on thickly, and use lots of texture, so the light moves across it as you approach. Photographs flatten all that out.”

“Yes, I think that’s right. This moves with the light, too. It is truly beautiful. Where did you get it, Irene?” Betsy knew she hadn’t sold a pattern like this to Irene-she had never seen a pattern like this, in her shop or anywhere.

“I did it myself,” Irene said quietly.

Godwin said, “You did? But your work isn’t anything like this!”

Irene gave him a freezing glance and said, “I got to thinking about those paintings, and I went back a second time by myself and I borrowed Martha’s copy of the exhibit catalog, and I thought some more, and I did this. Is it any good?”

“It’s amazing, it’s fantastic,” said Betsy.

Godwin said, “It really is wonderful, Irene. How did you get those swirls of snow?” They weren’t smooth lines, but lumpish streaks, an effect an oil painter gets by using the edge of his palette knife.

“Caron cotton floss,” said Irene. “It’s got those slubs in it, and I just kept working it over the top until it looked right.” A figure in the foreground, walking with the snow pushing her back into a curve, was done in shades of charcoal and light gray, with a touch of wine at the throat and on a package she was struggling not to lose. The curve of her back, done in broken rows of straight stitches, made the viewer feel her strain against the harsh wind.

Betsy leaned closer. It looked to her as if all the figures and images in the work were done with blended stitches. The overall effect was of solid objects seen through a blur of snow.

Godwin, cocking his head at yet a different angle, frowned and said, “I don’t think this is an exact copy of the painting in the exhibit, is it?”

“No,” said Irene, as if admitting to a fault. “Mr. Wiggins’s painting was old; it had old-fashioned cars and wagons pulled by horses. I used modern cars, except for one of those carriages I’ve seen in movies that get pulled by a horse through the park. I liked the way Mr. Wiggins’s horses looked, so that’s why I put one in, too. And I found a photograph in the library of Columbus Circle, so I knew what that tall thing really looks like.”

“Plinth,” said Godwin. “It’s called a plinth.”

Irene ignored that. She said to Betsy, “I was afraid it was too… messy.”

Godwin said, “I think all the overstitching is brilliant.”

Betsy said, “Yes, that gives it an especially wonderful effect. What are you going to do with it?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Irene. “I wanted to know first if it was any good.”

“This is beyond good,” said Godwin. “This is… this is art.”

This time Irene glanced at him with respect. “You think so?”

“Yes.”

“I agree,” said Betsy. “Any art gallery would be proud to offer this. Of course, I’d like you to turn it into a pattern. This would be a real challenge for an advanced stitcher, but I’m sure I could sell it. But maybe you should enter it in a competition first. Is there a competition for work like this, Godwin?”

“There are all sorts of needlework competitions,” he said. “It would do well in any of them, I think.”

Irene said, “Then I’ll put it in the State Fair, I guess.” Irene had lots of blue ribbons from the Minnesota State Fair’s needlework competitions.

“Or CATS,” said Godwin. “Hey, they’re coming to Minneapolis in October this year, so you could enter it in both.” CATS was the Creative Arts and Textile Show, which featured needlework designers, classes, and booths selling the latest patterns and fibers. It had a prestigious competition for needlework.

“This is so different from anything I’ve done before,” said Irene, who had in fact never attempted more than slight changes in someone else’s pattern, and who had always selected very literal patterns. “But it felt good doing it. It felt better than almost anything I’ve done before.” She reached for the canvas and began to roll it up.

“Don’t you want it finished?” asked Betsy.

“No, not yet,” said Irene. “Maybe later. I’ve got to get back to work.” She turned and hurried out.

“Probably can’t afford to have it finished,” said Godwin. “She came in here on Saturday and bought nine colors of wool, two skeins of metallics, and a fat quarter of twenty-eight Cashel. She counted out the last two dollars in change. Poor thing.”

Betsy said, “There are a lot of hobbies that pay enough so the hobbyist can at least break even, but this isn’t one of them. Needleworkers can’t sell their work for even what the materials cost, much less the hours spent stitching it. That piece she just took out, she’ll probably end up giving away rather than be insulted by an offer of forty dollars for it. I just don’t understand why fabulously talented people who work with needles and fibers don’t get the recognition that people who work in oil or metal do. It isn’t fair.”

“Would you buy it?” asked Godwin.

Betsy half closed her eyes, picturing it on her living room wall, in a smooth, dark frame… “Gosh, yes.”

“What would you pay for it? I mean, if it was an auction, and you were bidding on it. How high would you go?”

Again Betsy half closed her eyes, imagining raising her hand with a numbered paddle in it. Fifty dollars, a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars. “Who’s bidding against me?” she asked.

“The Getty.”

Betsy giggled. “Then I haven’t got a chance, have I? But I’d go as high as five hundred, I guess.”

Godwin smacked his hand down on the desk. “Sold! Would you really go that high?”

Betsy hesitated, then recalled that figure in the foreground so realistically bent under the wind’s constant shove, and the way the snow swirled around the plinth and softened the vertical lines of the buildings. She had worked not far from Columbus Circle many years ago, and had once been out in a city blizzard… “Actually, yes, I think I would. But I’d also like to hang it down here as a model for a while, and sell lots of patterns. Oh, darn, I let Irene get away without asking if she’d do that Terry Nolan model for me. Remind me when we’re closing up, I need to call her at home.”

It was a little after one when the door’s Bing! brought Alice and Martha in, project bags in hand. It was nearly time for the Monday Bunch to meet. The two went to the library table in the middle of the room, but hesitated when they saw the Dazor light.

“What’s this?” asked Alice, a tall woman with mannish shoulders and chin.

“It’s a magnifying light, silly,” said Martha, who was short and plump, with silver hair.

“I know that. What I meant was, what’s it doing here?”

Betsy said, “I’ve set up a sample basket so people can try out fabrics and fibers and stitches, and I’m going to let them do it under the Dazor if they like, so they can see better.”

Alice, who was inclined to blurt out whatever was on her mind, said, “And maybe somehow they’ll get the notion they need the lamp, too?”

“ Alice!” scolded Martha. A brisk-mannered widow in her late seventies, she was an ardent practitioner of Minnesota Nice.

“That’s the idea, certainly,” agreed Betsy cheerfully.

The women had barely taken their places at the library table when the door opened again. This time it was Jill Cross, a tall, ash-blond woman with a Gibson girl face. She nodded at Betsy and Godwin and took a seat at the table.

“Not on duty today?” asked Alice in her deep voice.

“No,” said Jill, opening her drawstring bag and taking out a needlepoint canvas pinned to a wooden frame. It was a Peter Ashe painting of a Russian church liberally ornamented with fanciful domes. She was using a gold metallic on the one swirled like a Dairy Queen cone.

“That’s coming along real nice,” noted Alice.

“Uh-huh.” Jill was normally taciturn, but this shortness bordered on rudeness.

Betsy said, “Something bothering you?”

“Huh? Oh.” She sighed. “All right, yes. I think I told at least some of you that Lars was going to sell his hobby farm.”

“You told me,” said Martha. “I thought you were pleased. I know you’ve been wanting him to cut back on the time he spends trying to make a go of that place.”

“Yes, that’s true. Actually, he’s had it for sale for a month now.”

“What, you’re afraid he isn’t going to get his price for it?” asked Alice.

“No, he got his price last week.”

“Then what’s the problem?” asked Martha.

“I think he’s already spent the money.”

“On what?” asked Betsy. She knew Lars and Jill had been dating for a long time-two or even three years. They weren’t living together, or even officially engaged, but neither dated anyone else so far as Betsy knew.

“That’s just it, I don’t know. He’s been making long-distance calls and reading books about-something. You know Lars, working fifty hours a week isn’t enough to keep that man occupied. First it was boats, then it was the hobby farm. I don’t know what’s next, flying lessons or do-it-yourself dentistry. That’s what’s bothering me-he never talks to me before he decides what he’s going to do.”

Godwin said, “Some men are just terrible at sharing their plans. Afraid they’ll start an argument, I guess.”

“Are you having trouble with John again?” asked Alice, sometimes as perceptive as she was tactless.

“No, not exactly. Well, actually, it’s me who doesn’t want to start the argument.” Godwin lived with a wealthy attorney, an older man who, by Godwin’s telling, was kind, generous, and very possessive.

Alice, who had sat down next to the Dazor, made a sudden exclamation.

“What?” asked Betsy.

Alice had casually turned the light on and, instead of using it to light her crochet project, had taken a scrap of twenty-count Jobelan from the basket to look at it through the big magnifying glass. “I can see this!” she said.

“So can I,” said Godwin, who was at the other end of the table from her.

“No, I mean, I can see the weave, I can actually see the weave!”

Betsy and Godwin exchanged smiles. While Alice was not in a position to afford a Dazor, her reaction was exactly what they’d hoped for. Other customers would sit there and hold a piece of high-count linen under that magnifying light, and the cash register would ring merrily.

Two more Monday Bunch members came in to sit down with projects and soon the table was alive with helpful hints and gossip. Betsy kept the coffee cups filled, served the occasional customer, and brought patterns, fabrics, and fibers to the table to be examined and, often enough, set aside by the cash register.

She came from the back with the newest Mirabilia pattern to hear Martha saying in an amused voice, “Honestly, Emily acts as if hers is the first baby ever born! All she ever talks about anymore is the joy and burden of staying home with an infant.”

“All first-time mothers are like that,” said Kate McMahon with a little sigh. “My Susan certainly is, and I expect I was, too.”

“Have any of you talked to Irene lately?” asked Betsy, anxious on behalf of Alice to change the subject. Alice ’s only child had died young of a heart ailment.

“No, why?” asked Phil Galvin, a retired railroad engineer. He was working on a counted cross stitch pattern of a mountain goat.

“She has made the most amazing-”

The door to the shop made its annoying Bing! sound, and a very big police officer came in. He was about twenty-five, golden blond, and excited. “Found you at last, Jill!” he exclaimed, his voice as loud as he was big.

“Hi, Lars!” said Jill, getting up and heading toward him. “What’s up?”

“Look at this, look what I found!” He had a sheaf of papers in his hand and thrust it at her.

Jill took the papers, glanced at the top one, then more slowly looked at two or three sheets under it. “What is this? Some kind of old car-what, reported stolen?” she asked. “Where’d it turn up?”

“No, no! I finally found this for sale. I can’t believe the price. Wait till you see it!”

“See it?” asked Jill, handing back the papers. “What do you mean, what have you bought?”

Lars thrust the papers back at her. “In there, look at the picture of it!”

Betsy, curious, came to look around Jill’s shoulder.

“You want to buy this?” said Jill, having sifted through the papers until she found the eight-by-ten color photo again. “Why?”

But Betsy, glancing at the printing on the margin of the photo, said, “Oh, my God, it’s a Stanley Steamer! Is it for real? Does it run? Where is it?”

“Yes, it’s real, a 1911 touring car. It’s in Albuquerque. And yes, it runs, or he’s pretty sure it will, after it has a little work done on it. He had an accident with it a few years ago and it’s been just sitting under a tarp in his back yard. But he says they’re harder to kill than a rattlesnake. What I can’t believe is the price. Only wants seventeen thousand for it!”

“Dollars?” said Jill. “For an old, old car that’s been in a wreck and it will maybe run after you’ve done, oh yeah, a little work on it?”

“You’re really going to bring it up here?” asked Betsy eagerly.

“Of course he isn’t!” barked Jill. “Steam?” she said to Lars. “Like a locomotive?”

“Yeah, just like a locomotive, except it’s a car. Isn’t that great? It’s got the original boiler in it!”

“From 1911? A ninety-year-old boiler sounds dangerous to me.”

“The boiler on a Stanley never blows. Ever. And there are lots of them still out there on the road. There’s a whole organization of people who drive them. And there’s all kinds of places that make parts for it, tires and windshields and all. The owner is an old guy, a doctor, who can’t work on it himself anymore, he’s got heart problems.” He shifted his ardent gaze to Betsy, whose expression was much more receptive than his girlfriend’s. “I found this old book by a guy who got a hold of a Stanley and got it running. He tells some stories in that book that about had me rolling on the floor.” Thinking about the stories in the book made his blue eyes twinkle and the corners of his mouth turn up. Lars was a good-looking man, and when amused and enthusiastic, he was irresistible.

Betsy said, “Will you take me for a ride in your Stanley Steamer, Lars?”

Jill turned away and walked back to the table, where she put a great deal of meaning into the way she sat down.

Lars didn’t notice. He continued eagerly to Betsy, “Nobody knows how fast the Stanley Steamer can go, ’cause as long as you hold the throttle open, it just keeps on accelerating. In 1906 it set the world land speed record of a hundred and twenty-seven miles an hour. There’s a picture of it in this guy’s book of the special chassis they put on it, like a canoe. In 1907 they tried again-it was on Daytona Beach in Florida -and this time, at over a hundred and fifty, it hit a bump and the air got under it, and it actually took off, like an airplane!” Lars’s hand described a shallow arc. “Of course, it crashed after a few dozen yards, but just think, over hundred and fifty, and that still wasn’t its top speed!”

“In 1907? That’s amazing!”

Lars continued, “Most cars back then could manage about twenty-five miles an hour going downhill with a tail wind, so it isn’t amazing, it’s fantastic! I wonder if my car can go that fast.” His blue eyes turned dreamy.

“But then it crashed,” murmured Jill, bowing her head. “Lord, help us not to forget that little part, amen.”

Several other members of the Monday Bunch snickered softly.

Lars, aware at last that he had lost Jill, went to her to show her the color photo again. He said in a wheedling voice, “Just look at it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Look at the shape, so beautiful and old and classy. It’s got brass trim and wooden wheels, and look at those big old lamps for headlights. Plus, it doesn’t have a horn like other cars, but a whistle!” Lars shrilled a creditable imitation of a steam train whistle. “Wheee-owwwwww! And it doesn’t go brrum, brrum like gasoline engines. It goes chuff, chuff, chuff, chuff!” He began to circle the library table, elbows bent and arms working. “Chuff, chuff, chuff-whee, whee-owwwwwww!”

Phil and the women laughed.

Jill, her voice sounding strained from her attempt to be reasonable, said, “Listen to me, Lars. This car has got to be dangerous. It’s more than ninety years old, and it’s been in a wreck. And it’s a steam-powered automobile. That’s something they tried and gave up on, or why isn’t every car on the road today powered by steam? And look at this thing, it hasn’t even got a roof! What are you going to do when winter comes?”

“Oh, it’s not going to be my main car. I’m just going to drive it for fun!”

Phil, never one to spoil a good argument, said, “I could help you get it going, Lars. I started out in steam-driven locomotives.”

“See?” Lars said to Jill.

Phil continued, “And there’s an antique car meet every year right here in Minnesota. They drive from New London to New Brighton.”

“ New Brighton?” echoed Betsy. “You mean our New Brighton? The Minneapolis suburb?”

Phil nodded. “They finish up in a park in New Brighton, and the mayor comes to shake every driver’s hand. I’ve gone a couple of times to watch them come in. I remember there’s usually a 1901 Oldsmobile, and a 1908 Cadillac, and a spread of Maxwells and Fords. Beautiful old cars-and one year they had those bicycles that have a big wheel up front and a little bitty wheel behind. There’s a big club that runs the thing. People come from all over to drive in it.”

“Are they the Minnesota Transportation Museum people?” asked Martha. “We’ve got some of them right here in town.”

“No, those folks run the street cars and steamboat and a couple of steam locomotives,” said Phil. “This is a different bunch, they only run horseless carriages.”

“An annual meet, huh?” said Lars thoughtfully. “Naw, they probably wouldn’t let me in it with my Stanley. I’d be passing them old explosion-engine people right and left.” He began to circle the table again. “Chuff, chuff, chuff, wheee-owwww!” he crowed, working his elbows back and forth. “Get a horse!” He huffed back to Jill and got onto one knee so he could look up appealingly at her. “Ride with me?”

Jill frowned and looked away-only to encounter Betsy’s equally ardent face. “I’ll help. In fact, I’ll be Lars’s sponsor. I’ll pay fees and buy coal or wood, or whatever you burn to make steam. Mention the name of the shop and I’ll split the cost of restoration. Let me ride along, and it won’t cost him a dime. Say yes, Jill, please?”

Jill sighed and looked again at the photo, shaking her head. Betsy looked too, holding her breath, wishing hard. The car was standing on a tarred road against the backdrop of desert scrub and cactus. It gleamed a rich forest green. The wooden wheel spokes were painted yellow, and there appeared to be yellow pinstriping on the body. And Jill was wrong, it did have a top, if that folded hunk of black canvas hanging out over the back seat was any guide.

Something that looked like an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner, complete with hose, was curled up against the passenger’s-no, the steering wheel was on the right, so against the driver’s side, under the door.

“Strange the photographer didn’t notice when he took the picture that there was a vacuum cleaner still on the running board,” Betsy remarked. The car was gleaming on the outside, so she assumed the inside had also been cleaned and polished.

“It’s not a vacuum cleaner, it’s for when you stop to take on water,” said Lars, rising to point at the device with a big forefinger. “It just sucks it up out of a well or a pond or even a ditch. But you can pull into someone’s yard and use their hose, too.”

“Wow!” said Betsy, thinking how thrilling it would be to have a Stanley Steamer chuff up in front of the shop to ask for a bucket of water. How even more marvelous to be riding in a Stanley. What a thrill!

But Jill didn’t smile, and Lars, realizing at last how deep in the doghouse he was, knelt again. “I know I should have talked to you before I decided to buy it,” he said. “And if you say no, I’ll call back and tell him I’ve changed my mind.”

Betsy closed her eyes and crossed her fingers.

She heard Martha say, “I’ve always wanted to ride in an antique car.”

Then Alice said, “We could make costumes. Waists and long skirts, and great big hats with veils.”

Godwin said, “We could find boaters and celluloid collars, and make spats and close-fitting trousers! Oh you kid!”

Betsy hadn’t thought about costumes. Oh, Jill just couldn’t say no!

Phil added, “I could renew my boiler license easy, if it would make you feel better about this.”

“Please?” said Betsy.

Jill let out a long breath. “Oh, what the heck. I’m not living dangerously enough already, arresting drunk drivers and the occasional murderer Betsy scares up. So sure, Lars honey, go tell the doctor with the bad heart you’ll take his crumpled car off his hands.”