Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_04 Read Online Free PDF Page A

good.”
    â€œIf this were a game, I wouldn’t mind going on with it, because I wouldn’t mind losing once in a while. But murder is serious, peoples’ lives are at stake. If I accuse someone falsely—” She sighed and put her head back, closing her eyes. “I could not bear that.”
    After a minute or two of silence, Jill said quietly, “All right, I promise I won’t ask you to go sleuthing again, and I’ll discourage others from coming to you.”
    â€œThank you,” Betsy murmured. Having received the support she felt she badly needed, Betsy relaxed—and suddenly didn’t feel quite as exhausted.
    Jill said, “Did I tell you Lars is selling his hobby farm?”
    Lars was Jill’s boyfriend, a fellow police officer and a workaholic. That he’d give up a source of hours of backbreaking labor surprised her. “No, you didn’t. What’s he going to do with the money, invest in something that’s even more work?”
    Jill laughed, and Betsy asked, “Does he ever take a vacation?”
    â€œNot since I’ve known him. Oh, he takes time off, but it’s just so he can concentrate on some major project, like refinishing every floor in the house that went with the farm he’s about to sell.”
    They were coming into Duluth, a city set on a broad and high terraced hill overlooking a magnificent harbor. I-35 swooped in a big curve down the hill, then ran near the lake. The overpasses had silhouettes of Viking ships carved into them.
    North of the city, bluffs stood with their feet in the icy water of Lake Superior. I-35 ended and they picked up Highway 61, which ran through tunnels in the bluffs. Then the land opened out again, though now Betsy noticed something stressed about it, something very opposite from the lush farmland farther south. The snow cover was deeper, but Betsy sensed the soil under it was thin, as if bedrock were just a few inches below that. Naked granite poked up here and there, dark brown or rust red, ancient stuff, worn smooth between the creases. Trees, fewer in variety, looked to be struggling. Betsy told herself not to be foolish; for all she knew, the trees were young, the soil rich.
    But knowing that in Mississippi and Georgia the azaleas were blooming, and in Maryland the tulips were nearly finished, while here one could still go ice fishing, troubled her adopted California soul. She was not bred to be icebound despite her youth in Wisconsin.
    The towns north of Duluth were small and looked as stressed as the land. Small houses, some merely cabins, shabby bars, and unkempt gas stations lined the road. Here were nothing approaching the beautiful mansions in the northern suburbs of Duluth. Of course, these buildings weren’t flimsy, like the shacks Betsy had seen on a trip through the Deep South years ago. Up here, a person couldn’t live in a house with thin walls or broken windows.
    How did the people manage to survive in Minnesota before insulation and storm windows? Betsy wondered. And what on earth did the pre-Columbian Indians do when winter set in?
    But she didn’t ask Jill; she only gazed out at the tall pines and clusters of aspen—or were they birch? She didn’t know. The trees thinned out and there was Lake Superior on her right, a beautiful, restless slate blue. DMC 824, thought Betsy, absently comparing the color to a floss number. Wait a minute, she thought, the lake ice is out already. I guess there are signs of spring up here after all. That thought occupied her happily the rest of the journey.

3
    â€œ L ook for the entrance sign for Judge Magney State Park,” Jill said, so Betsy looked.
    They had gone through Grand Marais a few miles back and Betsy had seen why Jill smiled when she called it the Scandinavian Riviera—it was a pretty little town, especially in contrast to the hardscrabble villages they had gone through. Like Duluth, it was on a steep hill that