Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_02 Read Online Free PDF Page A

women who loved needlework and were free at two on Monday afternoons. Some were retired, some were homemakers, some worked part-time or nights, one even arranged for a very late lunch hour. The numbers varied from week to week, rarely rising above four or five. Today, every current member was present, all eleven. Betsy had to bring folding chairs from the back.
    â€œDid you see it?” asked Alice Skoglund, a large woman, not just plump but tall and big-boned. She had faded yellow hair well mixed with gray and a lot of jaw. Her plastic-framed eyeglasses caught the light as she looked toward Betsy. Her fingers moved mechanically, crocheting afghan squares in bright-colored polyester yarn, dropping them as they were finished into a plastic bag already bulging with them. “The skeleton, I mean.”
    Eyes looked everywhere but at Betsy, most at the needlework in hand. They all wanted details, too, but were embarrassed that one of their number was so open in her inquiry.
    â€œNo,” said Betsy. She sat at the head of the table, where she could see the front door in case a customer came in. A cordless phone stood handy in case a customer wanted to call in an order from home. She was still working on that first mitten. Last night’s flurries had melted, but under a gray sky the temperature struggled to reach forty.
    â€œIt must have been exciting out there,” said Martha Winters, a pleasant-faced woman who at seventy-four worked only part-time in her dry cleaning shop, but whose eyes were still sharp enough for her to do counted cross-stitch on twenty-four-count evenweave. Flick, flick went her needle, and a chickadee had a beak.
    â€œOh, not so much,” said Betsy. “Well, it was exciting to see the boat actually come up, but we waited a long time for that to happen.”
    â€œAnd when it did come up, who found the skeleton?” asked Martha’s bosom companion, Jessica Turnquist. Jessica was three inches taller but twenty pounds lighter than Martha. She had a long face with large, slightly bulgy eyes, and a patrician nose over a mouth pressed thin by years of firm opinions. Jessica was crocheting a white baby blanket in swift popcorn stitch; it looked as if a cloud were forming on the table in front of her.
    â€œSome divers. They swam over and climbed on the boat, and suddenly one of them shouted to Jill and Lars that they’d found a skeleton. Jill went aboard for a look, then told Lars to radio for help.” Betsy looked at her incipient mitten, made a noise, and undid two stitches.
    â€œIs the skeleton a man or a woman?” asked Godwin, who was working on a magnificent needlepoint Christmas stocking.
    â€œI heard it was a woman,” said Alice, the woman with the manly jaw.
    â€œThat’s right,” said Betsy. “Jill told me the medical examiner said that. I think I saw him out on the boat, but there were so many investigators and police and all, I couldn’t say for sure. I didn’t realize finding a skeleton would create such a fuss. He may even have arrived after Jill arranged for someone to bring me back to the dock, a nice man with a perfectly enormous boat.”
    â€œAny idea who?” asked Jessica, who could crochet without looking.
    â€œI think his name was Dayton. Luke? Matt? Something like that. Very handsome and polite.”
    Several of the women coughed as if to cover chuckles, and Jessica said, “No, I mean who the skeleton is.”
    â€œNo, there weren’t any clothes or a purse or anything. Just the bones.”
    â€œHow could they even tell it was a woman?” asked a very pregnant young woman named Emily, new to the Bunch. She was knitting a crib-size afghan in blue, pink, and white. “I mean, a skeleton is a skeleton is a skeleton, right?”
    â€œNot at all,” said Martha the dry cleaner. “Don’t you watch The Discovery Channel? They have a wonderful show about autopsies and things. They can