Framed In Lace by Ferris Monica

Author:Ferris, Monica [Ferris, Monica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Chick-Lit
ISBN: 9780425171493
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1999-09-30T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

B

etsy went back to the shop. She thought she was maintaining a poker face over Alice’s startling confession, but Godwin read something and asked, “What did you learn?”

“I can’t say, for sure,” she replied.

“Why?” asked Shelly.

“Because I want to talk it over with Jill first.”

“Hey, I’m your friend, too, aren’t I?” demanded Godwin. “You can tell the anything.”

“It’s not because she’s a friend, it’s because she’s law enforcement,” said Betsy, and retreated from their suddenly serious expressions. She was worried, too.

She went into the shop’s little back room, where a bathroom took up half the space and the other half was crammed with a coffee machine and boxes of stock and folding chairs. She hung up her coat and put her purse in a locked cabinet. She came out, but still wasn’t ready to face her employees or a chance customer. She looked

around for something to do in the back of the shop. It was nearly three o’clock.

From the front she could hear Godwin and Shelly talking, their voices swift and urgent, but not loud.

Speculating, thought Betsy, about what I learned from Alice. Thank God they don’t have a clue. Poor Alice!

Back here was a little area set apart from the front by two sets of box shelves, double sided, filled with fabric, yarns, books, and magazines. There was a small round table and two comfortable chairs on the left, where customer and employee or salesman and owner could sit and plan really big projects or a substantial increase in the credit limit.

There was a cordless phone on the table; Betsy picked it up and dialed Jill’s home phone number. She got a recording, and left a message: “Jill, can you call or come over as soon as possible? I have something to tell you. It’s kind of urgent.” She hung up and thought about calling Malloy, but what could she tell him? She was not going to reveal Alice’s secret, and it would be useless to just tell him that Alice had once hated Trudie without telling him why. No, the person she needed to talk to was Jill.

She straightened the chairs and moved some catalogs back to where they belonged. Then she decided to tackle a spinner rack near the box shelves that held counted cross-stitch patterns and supplies. The items on the rack weren’t moving well—perhaps because the rack looked so disorganized, like a collection of remnants. She took the items off the rack and laid them out in various ways on the table. Scissors all together? No. Arranged in sets of scissors, needles, thimbles, patterns? No. She finally decided to treat the rack like a Christmas tree, which meant the bigger the item, the nearer the bottom it should go. She swiftly put things back on the spinner, big scissors and floss organizers on the bottom,

chatelaines and smaller scissors in the middle, and thimbles and scabbard needle holders on the top row of black metal arms. That at least looked better than the original arrangement.

She

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