Monica Ferris - A Murderous Yarn

Lars spent fifteen minutes clearing the pilot light tube, then reopened the valve to let Coleman gas reach it, lit a long weed stem, and squatted to poke it through one of the holes in the front of the hood. There was a whump that shot flame out both holes. Lars fell backward, landing on his hands and bottom, but said, “See? It’s fine, she’s starting up for me!” He kept his head turned awkwardly away from Jill, and Betsy, in a pretense of going to see if her hat was in the car, saw the reason. The latest explosion had left a blister in place of Lars’s right eyebrow. But the burner was hissing happily, and Lars continued the process of rebuilding a head of steam, which took almost no time, as the boiler hadn’t cooled much during the breakdown.

Jill insisted Betsy ride with her, that Lars drive very slowly; and she followed behind him, emergency lights blinking, all the way home.

In a Minnesota summer, nights can be gloriously cool. At 4 A.M. Saturday, June 12, in a dead calm, the temperature was sixty-three. By six it had risen to sixty-eight, and as the sun climbed, it continued to rise. A light breeze started flapping the pennants on the sailboats moored at private docks in St. Alban’s and Excelsior Bay.

The breeze caused the sailor heading out on Lake Minnetonka to reach for his jacket, but by the time he passed the Big Island, he had taken it off again. By 8 A.M., under a spotless sky, it was seventy-one.

Already the air around The Common, Excelsior’s lakeshore park, had begun to smell of grilled pork, hot dogs, cotton candy, smoothies, and deep-fried chicken tenders. Rows of white canvas booths were rising like geometrical mushrooms, filled to bursting with paintings, jewelry, sculpture, Japanese kites, birdhouses shaped like English cottages, and other exotica, as artists prepared for business. Excelsior’s annual art fair was hoisting canvas as it prepared to get under way.

The weatherman predicted temperatures in the upper eighties by midafternoon, but added that the continued light breeze off the lake would keep everyone at the fair comfortable.

Betsy came out of her shop around nine. The long block of Lake Street that Crewel World faced was empty of cars, but had a white canvas booth of its own set up in the middle of the street. Betsy headed for it. There were three people in the booth, a man and two women. Above the booth was a plastic banner with ANTIQUE CAR RUN printed on it in rust-brown letters.

The real Antique Car Run, from New London to New Brighton, was next weekend. Today, Saturday, a group of twenty-five drivers were in the Twin Cities on a publicity tour that included a run from the state capitol building in St. Paul to Excelsior and back.

It was rumored the governor would ride in one of the cars, a rumor the club was careful not to extinguish. Minnesota ’s eccentric governor always drew a crowd.

Both women in the booth were on cell phones, and both were gesturing so wildly that Betsy, approaching, felt a pang of alarm. But the man, a nice-looking fellow about Betsy’s age, winked at her and said, “They’re always like this just before things get under way.”

Betsy said, “Things are going according to plan, then.”

“Yes, the first car will leave in about five minutes.”

“Where do you want me?”

“Right here. But we don’t have anything for you to do until the first ones arrive, which won’t be for about two hours. Your tasks will be to note the time of arrival of each vehicle, and to point them at me in the booth so I can direct them to parking places along the curb.” He glanced up and down the empty street, which had No Parking signs tied to every pole. “I hear we’re not very popular with the committee running the Art Fair.”

Betsy turned to look up toward The Common, two blocks away. Starting before dawn, a slow-moving line of vans, SUVs, trucks, and campers bearing artists and their work had clogged this street, the last draining away into the fair only an hour ago. But now the street belonged to the Antique Car Run, so none of the many hundreds of visitors to the fair could park here today. This distressed those running the art fair, because every extra block visitors had to walk to the lakefront meant their feet would give out that much sooner, giving that much less time for the artists to extract money.

No, Deb Hart had not been pleased at a meeting of her art fair committee and the Antique Car Run committee.

In vain the Antique Car Run president had argued that people who came to see the horseless carriages would then wander over to the fair so temptingly nearby.

Deb had argued that people who came to look at old cars were not the same kind of people who visited art fairs. She had suggested a parade of old cars up Excelsior’s main street, all the way up to the far other end, where there was plenty of room and no competition from fair goers. “Besides,” she’d pointed out in a reasonable voice, “there’s the car dealership down there, which is probably more in tune with the kind of people who turn out for an event like yours.”

But Mayor Jamison had sided with the antique car event planners. “There are all kinds of car people,” he had said, “hot rod people, classic car people, new car people. But horseless carriage people are different. They’re not interested in tires and cubic-inch measurements of engines, but the history and unique beauty of these early machines. Such people see their antiques as works of art rather than mechanical devices, and so might more properly be classed among the art seekers who come to the fair.”

Betsy, who had endured much ear-bending from Lars about main burner jets, valve plungers, and cylinder oil, had not slipped into prevarication by so much as a nod of agreement with the mayor. Instead, she bit her tongue, while Deb Hart, all unknowing, succumbed to the mayor’s argument.

Now, on this beautiful June morning, she looked at the empty street and said, “No, the art fair is not happy with us.” Then she went back to the shop, unlocked the door, and stood a moment, thinking how she was going to accomplish her next task, which was to get the quilt stand just inside her door out onto the sidewalk.

Last night, a little before closing, an elderly woman named Mildred Feeney had come in asking for Betsy. She said she was associated with the Antique Car Run and asked if she might store a quilt that was to be a prize in a raffle in Betsy’s shop “just for tonight,” and Betsy had agreed. She had also agreed to bring it out in the morning. But that was before she’d seen the quilt and the stand on which it was to be displayed. She’d been busy in the back while it was brought in, apparently by a big crew of husky men, because now, looking at it, she wondered how on earth she was going to bring it out again all by herself.

The quilt, a queen-size model, was draped over a large wooden frame shaped like an upside down V. The frame was large enough to accommodate the quilt unfolded, holding it several inches clear of the floor on both sides.

And the stand wasn’t on wheels. Betsy took one end with both hands, tried to lift it, and decided the wood of the frame was at least oak, if not ironwood. The frame wasn’t exactly top-heavy, but without someone to steady it at the other end, it would easily tip over. Betsy’s shop was cozy, not spacious, and her front door was of an ordinary size. She hadn’t realized there was so sharp a curve from right inside the door to between the white dresser and the counter. How was she to get the long, inflexible frame and its clumsy burden to the door?

By pulling and shifting and, at one point, climbing up onto the counter and down the other side to adjust the angle of the frame.

But the door opened inward, and so the frame had to be moved backward again. And then the door must be propped open-no employee had propitiously turned up, of course-and the struggle begun again.