A Farewell to Yarns

night.'

“I'm not admitting anything.”

Willard, trying to adjust himself comfortably with his chin on Jane's lap where he might pick up any cookie crumbs that dropped, suddenly sat up and howled horribly. Jane went to the door and let Mel VanDyne in.

“Thought you'd want to know you can get back into the Howards' house this afternoon if you need to clear things out from your sale. Hello, Mrs. Nowack.'

“He's confessed, then?' Jane asked, moving her coat and Shelley's off Steve's old favorite chair so Mel could sit down.

“Has he ever. Once he got started, he didn't seem to be able to stop. He'll probably go to a mental hospital instead of jail. At least the press hasn't found out about this yet. It's going to be a three-ring circus when they catch on that Richie Divine is alive and about to be locked up.'

“I feel awful about this,' Jane said. 'If I hadn't dragged Phyllis over there in the first place—'

“You can't blame yourself, Jane. Killing people wasn't new to him. He's confessed to arranging for the bomb on the plane as well. He let a half dozen people die so that he could be Albert Howard.'

“Poor Fiona,' Shelley said.

“Oh, I don't know. He's trying hard to absolve her, but the more he talks, the more it seems she was responsible. Not that she actually planned any of it, but it was she who convinced him he had to escape the public spotlight at all costs. I'm not sure he's the one who hated it. And without her, he has no sense of self-preservation at all. Of course, killing the boy was different—'

“His own son,' Jane said with a shudder.

“Yes, but that was why. It wasn't just the blackmail threat. It was the very fact that Bobby was his son. Instead of looking up to his famous father, he was ready to betray him. Threatened to go to the papers, tell everybody, blow the cover the Howards had so carefully built up. Richie—or Albert—couldn't stand that. All those years of self-imposed, or Fiona-imposed, obscurity, then the one person he wanted to impress turned it on him.'

“How extraordinary. Just think of all the people in the world who would give anything for fame, and yet Richie and Fiona had it and were willing to break all the rules of civilization to escape it. Andy Warhol should have added something to that fifteen minutes of fame business to the effect that fifteen minutes is all that's good for anybody. Oh—I have something for you,' Jane said. She got up and dragged a plastic bag out of the cabinet below the bookshelves. 'Phyllis left her knitting here. She was working on a sweater for Bobby.”

VanDyne looked at the lumpy bag. 'So? She knit a clue into the pattern? Wasn't that A Tale of Two Cities?'

“In a sense she did.' Jane rummaged in the bag and pulled out a hardback knitting book of stitch patterns. From between various pages, scraps of yarn and corners of loose papers hung out. 'She left it here. I got it out last night to see if I could finish the sweater,' Jane explained, flipping through the pages until she came to what she wanted. She took out several typed pages stapled into a blue folder and handed it to Mel.

“The will!' he exclaimed, taking it from her. 'Had she changed it in Bobby's favor?'

“I don't know. I didn't read it. I was already so far over my snooping quota that I didn't feel I had the right,' Jane said. 'How rude of me! Would you like some tea and cookies?'

“I thought you'd never ask.'

“I've got to go,' Shelley said, following Jane to the kitchen. 'Are you going to invite him to Christmas dinner like you said?' she whispered.

“Quit nagging. All in good time.'

“Before the new year?'

“Get out,' Jane said, opening the door for her.

When Jane came back to the living room with Mel's tea, he was just glancing over the last page of the will. 'Bobby would have been disappointed. She left him a lifetime trust with approximately a thousand a month income. Enough to help him through, but not enough to live on in style. It reverts to her husband.'

“I'm so glad to hear that—that she had good sense in spite of seeming so stupid about him.”

“You fared better than Bobby did.'

“Me? What do you mean?'

“She left you twenty thousand, outright.”

“Dollars? Twenty thousand dollars?' Jane said, putting the tea tray down with a clatter. 'Imagine Phyllis doing a thing like that.”

He took a sip of tea and leaned back. 'Well, if that money were mine, I'd go looking for some sunshine over the holidays—Bermuda, maybe.”

Jane took a deep breath, gulped, and said as casually as she could manage, 'Then you don't have plans for Christmas? Would you like to have Christmas dinner with us?'

“What? And miss a microwaved frozen dinner by myself?' He grinned. Oh, that almost-dimple! 'I'd love to join you. Say, I'll even bring along dessert. Somebody at the office gave me a fruitcake.... What are you laughing about?”