Buttons and Bones (2 page)

So Betsy had started paying attention to buys the company was making on lakefront property well outside the Twin Cities, and when she found a couple of prospects, she let Jill know about them.

One, six acres with an old log cabin on it, was the more distant, three hours from Excelsior, only two from far-north Lake Itasca, source of the Mississippi River. The property came into bankruptcy court when the last legal owner fell into a terminal illness and mortgaged the place—long unused—to pay for medical expenses. He was, of course, unable to make payments.

The property was in a State Forest and on the shore of long, narrow Thunder Lake. Lars, experienced in buying and restoring property, drove up with Jill for a look and declared it a perfect location and the cabin suitable for restoration. Betsy took Lars’s word for it and directed her partner to sell it to the Larsons with the caveat “as is.”

On the other hand, since Jill was Betsy’s best friend, Betsy sold it to them for what the company had paid for it.

But now, because she was not anxious to start a stampede of requests or rebukes, she allowed the gossip and speculation at the crochet class to wash over her without comment.

Betsy was attending the class because she, too, wanted to expand into crochet. She’d bought a couple of books on how to do it but, as usual, found she needed to actually sit in the presence of people who already knew how and watch how their fingers moved.

She could make a chain, slip stitch, and single and double crochet, after a fashion; that is, slowly and painfully, and with the instruction book propped up in her line of sight. What she couldn’t do was crochet in a circle. It was like back when she could knit but not purl. Reading the instructions didn’t help, even when they were accompanied by illustrations. Nor could she hold the yarn properly in her left hand. She’d wrap it around her little finger, bring it up and over her index finger, and set off, and within four or five stitches the yarn would have slipped off her fingers. Though it was currently easier to crochet this way, she knew that if she was to advance in the craft, she had to learn to do it properly.

Despite his lackadaisical attitude toward beginners, instructor Godwin agreed that Betsy needed to do it right. Talking to her earlier in the week, he had compared it to his golf game: At first he swung at the ball any old way and was happy to reach the green in six to nine strokes. And that was fine—at first. But to get into really playing, lowering his score, and breaking a hundred, he had to learn the odd stances and peculiar movements of the game, practicing them until they became natural.

So Betsy watched Godwin’s hook flashing at top speed as it pulled yarn through the fingers of his left hand for a few moments. Then she gamely rewrapped the yarn through her own fingers and continued circling around her cup topper in single crochet—it had turned out that joining two ends and continuing to circle was far easier than holding the yarn properly.

“I heard they’re going to tear down the log cabin and build a year-round residence—and then move up there permanently.” This tidbit was offered by Meryl’s mother.

Since Lars was a sergeant on Excelsior’s little police department, a job he loved, Betsy doubted that very much. But she bit her tongue, thrust the crochet hook through a stitch, and reached for the yarn with her hook. She pulled it through so there were two loops on her hook, reached for the yarn again, and pulled it through both loops.

All those loops and it was called single crochet!

Of course it was a very solid, attractive stitch. Betsy looked at it admiringly. Just a few hundred more and she’d have a cup topper of her very own.

Two

BETSY was humming to herself as she closed up the shop. Connor was taking her out to dinner at a nice restaurant in Wayzata. She was pleasantly aware that things between the two of them were moving nicely; tonight he was going to bring his adult daughter Peg along to meet her.

Her smile grew complacent as she thought about Connor. He was very much her type: tall without being towering, strong without being muscle-bound, good-looking without being a true hunk. He had a keen mind, a sweet smile, and a wicked twinkle in his eyes. A retired Merchant Marine captain, he had a store of tales of life at sea that she found, in turn, moving or hilarious or exciting. Betsy, a former Navy WAVE, had always been attracted to things nautical.

Even better, Connor seemed to find a divorcee who was not tall or gorgeous or brilliant just his type. Maybe it was because his first wife had been all of those things, and it had not been a happy marriage. Betsy had been startled when he showed her a photograph of the first Mrs. Sullivan, who was a real beauty.

So maybe he was only pretending to court Betsy because she was his landlady and he was going to try for a reduction in his rent—she chuckled at the idea; he seemed to have all the money he needed to live comfortably, if not expansively. He had taken the smaller of the two rental units in her building last year, not because that was all he could afford but because that was all he needed. He had been born in Ireland, though his accent was, if anything, vaguely British at times.

A naturalized citizen of the United States, he had moved from Boston to Excelsior because his only daughter was in a graduate program at the University of Minnesota, and he wanted to be near her. She had been drawn to the university by a famous forensic anthropologist—her field of graduate study was biological anthropology.

And that gave rise to her sole worry about him. It appeared Peg was the only member of his immediate family still on friendly terms with him. His two sons had sided with their mother when the divorce finally happened, and though it had gone through five years ago, there were still hard feelings.

Betsy claimed she understood the family divided against itself, and she did, though not completely. She had no children from her two marriages, but while she might have no residual ill feelings about her first brief marriage, after all these years she still thought of her second husband as Hal the Pig.

She hoped the daughter was pleasant to know. The fact that Connor was ready to introduce the two of them was an excellent sign.

She had just finished running the credit card machine when the door sounded its two-note warning that someone was coming in. She looked around, prepared to greet Connor, and saw instead an ethereally beautiful young woman with alabaster skin and smoky black wavy hair. She was very slim, with long legs encased in denim. She wore low-heeled sandals and a sleeveless silk blouse in a shade of green that exactly matched her eyes. But her full mouth turned down at the corners, and a frown made a tiny crease between her flawless brows. She looked to be in her early twenties.

Betsy was so taken aback by her that she didn’t notice at once that Connor had come in on her heels. He spoke first. “Betsy, I want you to meet my daughter, Margaret Rose Sullivan. Peg, this is my very dear friend, Betsy Devonshire.”

Wow
, thought Betsy. She extended her hand. “How do you do?”

“How do you do?” replied the young woman, not taking the hand. She turned to her father. “Well, Da, she’s just as you described her.” She had a lovely, lilting Irish accent.

“Are you about done here?” Connor asked Betsy.

“Just a few more minutes,” promised Betsy.

“I hope so. I skipped lunch and I’m really starving,” said Peg.

Betsy kept her promise, and in five minutes they were in Connor’s car, heading up Highway 15 toward Orono. It skirted big Lake Minnetonka with its many bays and small towns along the way.

“The lake is beautiful,” said Peg. “How big is it?”

“There are a hundred miles of lakeshore,” said Betsy.

“Oh, it’s even bigger than I thought.”

“Yes, it’s so convoluted that it’s hard to take the whole thing in, except from the air.”

Peg went on, in a tone that hinted of amused condescension. “Everything around here is named with the syllable
Mini
, as if it’s small, even things like this grand, huge lake.”

“
Minne
is an Indian word for ‘water,’” said Betsy. “Minnetonka, Minnewashta, Minneapolis, even Minnesota, which means ‘many waters.’ There are a
lot
of lakes in the state.”

“I see. Da, do you like living here? I mean, this is kind of a backwater place ...” She laughed. “I mean, it’s hardly New York or Los Angeles. I came here because of Professor Henry Lamb at the university, and I’ll be gone in two years. Will you be glad to leave, too?”

Backwater? Humph! But Betsy found herself holding her breath while waiting for his reply.

“You know the reason I came here was to live near you. But I’m finding another reason, and she’s not leaving in two years.” Connor’s baritone was as warm as it was certain, and Betsy, sitting in the backseat, felt a thrill at this near declaration of intent.

“I see,” said Peg thoughtfully, and she gave a swift, not altogether friendly glance into the backseat.

 

 

 

THE restaurant in Wayzata was very nice.

“Is that how you say it, Why-ZET-ta?” asked Peg, while they waited to be seated. “Another Indian name, I suppose, written down by semiliterate settlers.”

Betsy said, “It is Indian.
Waziya
is the name of the Sioux god of the north, he who blows the cold north wind from his mouth. The suffix
ta
means ‘shore,’ and the whole just means ‘North Shore.’ Lake Minnetonka was very sacred ground to this Mdewakanton branch of the Dakota or Sioux. I don’t think the spelling is illiterate, I think the difference between the spelling and pronunciation is a product of scholars, the same sort who keep changing the spelling and pronunciation of Chinese place names.”

Peg laughed. “
Touché
,” she said.

Betsy said, “I hope you are getting all you want from your studies at our university.”

“Oh, yes—well, at least as much as I expected from a redbrick college.”

Betsy took a breath to reply, then bit her tongue. Connor’s ears were turning red, his sign of annoyance. No need to aggravate him further. But she wondered what had Peg’s undies all in a twist.

“Now, Peg,” said Connor, “many of these ‘redbrick’ universities are doing extremely good work. You came here yourself specifically to work with Dr. Lamb, who obviously is himself satisfied with the University of Minnesota.”

“Yes, of course you’re right, Da,” said Peg meekly.

Betsy had never heard a parent called “Da” except in British movies, but thereby knew it was a common Irish term of endearment for a father. She was touched by this evidence of a close tie of affection and respect between Connor and Peg. Betsy hoped Peg didn’t see her as a threat to the tie between the two of them. She would have to step very carefully.

Connor said to Betsy, “Has Jill Larson asked you up to their cabin yet?”

“Yes, but I can’t get away right now. Besides, I think they were just being polite. They’ve got a lot of work to do before it’s presentable for company.”

“Maybe they’re hoping to organize a working party.”

Betsy laughed. “That could be.”

“Who’s Jill Larson?” asked Peg. “And why do you use a plural noun when speaking of her?”

Connor said, “She’s married to Lars Larson ...” Peg snorted. “Ah, Peg, my dear, do you wish me to start pointing out some of the more outrageous Irish naming customs?” His Irish accent was suddenly very apparent; whether deliberate or not, Betsy couldn’t tell.

Peg said, in a pure Midwestern accent, “Oh, Da, don’t be such a dork!”

They all laughed.

Peg asked Betsy, “These Larson people, do they have children?”

“Yes, a girl, Emma Beth, who is three and a half and my goddaughter, and a little boy, Erik, who is nearly two.”

The food came then and a silence fell while the trio dug in. After a few minutes, Peg said, “I hope you realize what you are doing to my attempts to convince my palate that pizza, hamburgers, and cafeteria food are all they serve in this part of the world.”

“If I remember correctly,” said Betsy, “it’s all they serve on any campus.”

“Then it’s been going on since as far back as that?” asked Peg.

Betsy felt as if she’d been struck in the face.

Peg looked startled. “Did that come out of my wicked mouth, then?” she asked. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s all right,” said Betsy. “I suppose it has been a long time.”

“You’re a nasty, evil girl and no child of mine,” said Connor lightly, but with a hint of anger.

“I really am sorry, Da,” said Peg. “I’ll guard my tongue, I promise.”

Looking back on the evening while lying in bed, Betsy reflected that Peg hadn’t tried all that hard to keep her promise. There weren’t any further digs, at least none as serious as that first one, but still, Betsy sensed that Peg had a problem with her. It seemed it was true that she saw Betsy as a threat. Betsy thought that strange in a woman of Peg’s years. Normally only the very young were threatened by a new woman—oh. That was it. It wasn’t that Betsy threatened the relationship between Peg and Connor, but the one between Connor and his first wife.