A Murderous Yarn

despair at the large number there were to swage.

During the wait for backup to arrive, the boiler had run itself dry. Lars should have told Betsy to shut it down, close off the valves, but he’d been concentrating on keeping Marvin from doing something stupid.

Betsy took most of the blame. She should have thought of it, paid attention to the gauges. But the Stanley had sat there in silence and she had fallen into her internal combustion habit of thinking a silent car was a car shut off, and so the boiler was scorched.

“How do you know it was both of them?” asked Godwin.

“Because that was the only way everything fit. She was the one who pulled the trigger. She shot him early in the morning of the Excelsior run, as they were getting ready to leave the house for St. Paul. Then she called Marvin, and he came over and took Bill’s body over to the lay-by in the trunk of his car. Charlotte followed with the trailer they hauled the Maxwell in. It was Marvin who drove the Maxwell in the run, not Bill.”

“But surely people talked to Bill,” objected Godwin. “How could they mistake Marvin for him?”

“Actually they didn’t really talk to him. Charlotte stayed with Marvin until he was parked. She talked to Adam and to anyone who came by, until Marvin was well under the hood and able just to grunt at anyone who tried to talk to him.”

“Why would Marvin help her like that?” asked Godwin.

“Because they were lovers, had been for years. Everything was okay until Bill started spending more time at home. Then he got suspicious. Marvin wanted Charlotte to divorce Bill, but Marvin wasn’t a wealthy man. And while Bill wasn’t taking care of his high blood pressure, he may have had his suspicions about Marvin confirmed before he had that fatal stroke everyone was anticipating.”

“Golden handcuffs,” said Godwin sadly.

“Yes, at least in part. But also, tyrants don’t make loving husbands.”

“What do you think, she just decided she’d had enough and shot him?” asked Jill.

“I don’t think so. She’s a very intelligent person, she would have had a better plan set up in advance. I think she told the truth in her confession; they had a quarrel, he got violent, which he’d done before, and she went for the gun and shot him.”

“Self-defense, then?” asked Godwin.

“Detective Steffans says no. She had to go into another room, unlock a drawer, and then go back with it. She could have left the house instead. On the other hand, one reason she wore those enveloping dresses was because sometimes she had to hide bruises. Bill struck her often, but was careful to hit her in places she could cover up with clothing.”

“The monster!” said Godwin, with a shiver.

“So what put you on to them?” asked Jill.

“Orts,” said Betsy.

That had been said into a break in the hammering from Lars, and he wheeled himself out from under his car long enough to inquire, “Orts?”

“Those little pieces of floss you cut off the end of a row of stitching. When you run it down so short you can’t take another stitch. The end you cut off is an ort.”

“Oh,” he said and went back to hammering.

“What about orts?” persisted Jill.

“The photographs of the crime scene you brought me, remember? There were orts on Bill’s trousers, just like they were on Charlotte’s dress. She said she left them wherever she stitched. Anyone who lay on the floor of her sewing room-where the shooting took place-would come away with orts all over his clothes. But the man who drove into Excelsior and dove under the hood of his car to repair it, had no orts on his trousers. That photograph of him in the Excelsior Bay Times showed them immaculately clean, as clean as Godwin over there.”

Godwin looked down at himself, then smiled at Betsy. “Thank you,” he said.

“That’s it?” said Jill. “Just because of some orts?”

“Well, there were some other things. The way she knew what Marvin was thinking when they came into my shop without his saying a word was exactly the way she knew what ‘Bill’ was thinking when he was sitting beside her in the Maxwell. I thought she did that with everyone she knew well, but she didn’t do it with anyone else. The smile she gave Marvin at the Courage Center pool was the same she gave the person we all thought was her husband. When I found out what kind of a tyrant Bill was, I wondered how Charlotte could feel so affectionate toward him. The answer was, she couldn’t.”

Godwin said, “So you just put it all together in your usual clever way.”

Betsy frowned. “I tried to think of other explanations, but none worked. Broward acted badly about my investigating because he thought he was the only one who knew about Marvin and Charlotte’s affair and was trying to prevent my finding out and telling his sister and brothers. Charlotte lied when she said Bro and Bill teamed up to keep Adam from taking Birmingham Metal.”

“How’d you find that out?” asked Jill.

“I didn’t. Steffans did. Bro told him the reason he came home was because he heard from Bill’s doctor that if Bill didn’t retire, he’d be dead in six months. Since Bro knew Steffans was looking for motives, Bro had every reason to point at Adam-and he did tell him about the Fuller and the race for president of the car club.

“And there was an accident in the tunnel that Saturday, just as Adam said, so his alibi checked out. So it wasn’t Broward and it wasn’t Adam.”

She turned to Jill. “Another thing that bothered me was the medical examiner’s statement about time of death.” She turned to Jill. “You know what I mean. The estimate was, he died between late Friday night and noon on Saturday. That makes the window curiously lopsided, if he’d been killed in that lay-by around noon. But if he was killed early in the morning, that was right in the middle of the window.”

Jill nodded. “I see what you mean.”

“I thought for a long while it was Marvin who did the whole thing, shot Bill and hid his body in the lay-by. But when? The night before? Marvin had an alibi for the night before; he was playing poker with some friends. Maybe late at night, after the poker game, or the day of the run, early in the morning. I thought about Bill going to confront Marvin over the affair he was having with Charlotte. I thought perhaps Marvin shot him when Bill got violent, and then, to cover the time of the murder, he took Bill’s place, driving the Maxwell in the run. But why bring Charlotte into it? He could just bury the body somewhere, or make it look like a robbery. Surely Marvin would never ask the woman he loved to be an accessory to murder. But if Marvin drove the Maxwell, Charlotte was right in the middle of the cover-up, deeply involved.

“So I thought she must be the one who shot him-only not at the lay-by, she was with me all day Saturday. Then I thought, well, what if she shot him early Saturday morning, when they were getting ready for the run? Then, okay, it still was Marvin doing the driving. She called Marvin to help her, and they came up with this hasty scheme. And there it was, all the pieces in place.”

“Clever of her to get you to provide her with an alibi,” said Godwin.

“No, it wasn’t,” said Jill. “She didn’t know about Betsy’s sleuthing skills or she would never have involved her. Once she found out Betsy has a nose for crime, she had to pretend she wanted Betsy to investigate, which was really the last thing on earth she wanted.”

Betsy nodded. “And because she was scared of what I might find out, she kept coming around to check on me. That was another thing that made me look at her. She couldn’t wait for me to come to her, she just had to find out if I was getting close. When she turned up in Willmar to shove Adam under my nose, I knew I was right.”

“That’s two police investigators you’ve gotten in ahead of,” said Godwin. “Sergeant Mike Malloy and now Detective Steffans.”

But Betsy shook her head. “No, he was onto her as well. He followed her out to Willmar because he was afraid she might try to murder me. While she was out there, he had a forensics team picking up all kinds of evidence in her house.”

Godwin cocked his head at her. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Heavens no!” said Betsy. “For one thing, he’s too tall and gawky. For another, his ears stick out. For another…” She tried to think of a personality trait to complain about, but once she started thinking about his shy smile, his charming wit, the way he looked at her with admiring eyes, she had to stop, because she couldn’t think of anything else.