Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_04 Read Online Free PDF

stepped down to Lake Superior, but just as this hill was much more modest, Grand Marais couldn’t hold a candle to Duluth, much less the Riviera. And therein lay the joke: Scandinavians, who dominated Minnesota culture, were presumed to be an unassuming people who would find this modest little town just their speed.
    Highway 61 ran alongside the lake. The trees were mostly pine, with the occasional cluster of birch. The snow cover was deep and fresh, and by the plumes of exhaust coming from other cars, the bright sun hadn’t managed to raise the temperature anywhere near freezing.
    The sign was easy to spot; it was one of those green billboards the federal government puts up. A dozen yards past it was a commercial billboard with an American Indian feather headdress on it, announcing the entrance to Naniboujou.
    Jill slowed, signal blinking, and made a right turn onto a narrow, snow-packed lane. A hundred yards away was a two-story rustic building covered with black wooden shingles under a gray roof. A scatter of trees marked the broad lawns beside and behind the lodge. A shingled tower marked the front of the building, and all along the wall beside it were tall, many-paned windows rising to peaks, framed in red.
    The car crunched to a halt in the parking area, and Jill shut off the engine. “All out,” she said. Betsy, very stiff, stood a moment outside the car and took a deep breath of the still, bitter-cold air.
    As they walked to the lobby door—which wasn’t in the tower, but alongside it—Betsy saw the restless surface of Lake Superior barely twenty yards away. No beach was visible, just a shallow drop-off at the edge of the lawn to blue water. She could hear little waves shushing.
    â€œCome on,” said Jill, and Betsy saw her standing beside an open door.
    The lobby was very small and strangely shaped. Shelves between the door and a single double-hung window were full of sweatshirts in various colors. A shelf under the window held collectibles and books, a theme that continued on more shelves. The rest of the room was mostly a check-in counter, with a wooden staircase and a door marked PRIVATE beyond it, amid a whole collection of odd angles.
    The dark-haired man behind the counter greeted Jill warmly by name, and Betsy wondered how often Jill had been here. Betsy glanced to her right, through anopen doorway, and her eye was startled by a large open space painted in primary colors. She went for a look, stepping into a room forty feet long and two stories high, full but not crowded with tables draped in midnight blue. There was a man in a brown uniform sitting alone at one of the blue tables, lingering over a cup of coffee.
    There was a huge cobblestone fireplace at the far end, with a small fire burning brightly. A pair of cranberry couches faced one another in front of it. A row of French doors marched down each side of the room. One row looked out over the parking lot, the other looked into a sunlit lounge.
    Betsy took another step into the room. Every inch of wall and ceiling was painted from the smallest box of Crayolas in unshaded blue, yellow, red, green, and orange. Squiggly lines, jagged lines, and rows of the pattern called Greek keys covered every surface—except between the French windows, where there were big faces, with Aztec noses and tombstone teeth and half-moon ears. It was startling, bold, amusing, wonderful.
    â€œCome on, we’ll drive around back,” said Jill.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOur room’s easier to get to through the back door.”
    â€œOh. Okay.” Betsy, trying to look at the room and follow Jill at the same time, stumbled, and Jill caught her by the arm. “Who painted that room?” Betsy asked as they went out into the cold again.
    â€œAntoine Goufee, a Frenchman. It was back in the twenties, and I hear they haven’t so much as touched it up since.”
    â€œWhat was he smoking, I wonder?”
    Jill laughed. “It