Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_02 Read Online Free PDF

tell all sorts of things just from a leg bone, the age and sex and everything; and here they have the whole skeleton.” Martha had curly white hair around a sweet face; that she was interested in forensic anthropology was surprising.
    â€œWas she murdered?” asked Alice.
    â€œOh, no,” said Godwin in his most faux-dulcet voice—for which he must hold several international records, thought Betsy, amused—“it’s a suicide, obviously. She crawled under the floor boards and waited for the boat to sink so she could drown.”
    â€œTsk,” went several women, but the rest giggled. Godwin’s sarcasm was part of his fame.
    â€œWhen did the Hopkins sink?” asked Emily. “Maybe she was a leftover from the accident.”
    â€œIt wasn’t an accident,” said Godwin. “The streetcar steamboats were sunk deliberately .” When Emily tried an uncertain giggle, he continued, “I’m not joking. They didn’t need them anymore, so the company sank them. Happened during the roaring twenties.”
    â€œNot the Hopkins ,” said Patricia Fairland, a handsome woman in her thirties with dark hair held back by a headband. She was crocheting a lacy edging on an embroidered table runner, using a number-ten steel hook and yarn thin as sewing thread, her long, delicate fingers darting swiftly.
    â€œSure the Hopkins ,” disagreed Godwin, glancing up from his Christmas stocking. “They sank them all about the same time, 1920-something, when roads were tarred and everyone could afford a car, and public transportation wasn’t absolutely necessary anymore.”
    â€œThe other five, yes, but not the Hopkins ,” insisted Patricia. “It was sold to the Blue Ribbon Café, and they renamed it the Minnetonka III, painted it white, and used it to give rides to tourists until 1949. I’m a member of the Minnesota Transportation Museum, Steamboat Branch. It’s in several books, about the Hopkins .”
    Betsy said, “When it came up out of the water, I could see it used to be white, not that mustard color the Minnehaha was restored to.”
    â€œYou can tell she’s new to this business,” remarked Jessica with a smile, “because the rest of us would have tried to decide whether the color is closer to DMC 437 or 8325.”
    â€œOh, DMC 437, definitely,” said Martha. “You know, I remember the Blue Line buying the Hopkins . They painted it white after they converted the engine to run on oil instead of coal. My Aunt Esther and Uncle Swan celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with a ride on it in 1938. I’d forgotten they renamed it. I think everyone from around here still called it the Hopkins most of the time. My Carl used to love to watch it out on the lake. He said it was the prettiest boat he’d ever seen. It’s a pity he didn’t live to see it brought up again.”
    â€œMaybe he isn’t dead,” said Alice. “Nobody knows, right?” Blinking behind the lenses, she looked at Martha, and there was a little stir in the group; it wasn’t polite to bring up old scandals when the scandalee was present.
    Jessica said, “She doesn’t like to talk about it.”
    But Martha said, “It’s all right, Jess.” She said to Betsy, with an air of making a statement for the record, “My husband left our house for work one summer morning in 1948 and never came home. Some people think he ran off with another woman, but I think he was mugged and the robber killed him and pushed his body in the lake or buried it somewhere or threw it in an empty boxcar so it got taken away. Because no trace of him was ever found. His disappearance was a great shock to me, but it happened a long time ago, and I’m pretty much over it.”
    â€œBut he never knew they sank it,” persisted Alice, frowning over her afghan square, “if he disappeared before it was