Knitting Bones Read Online Free Page B

flashed on something he’d said earlier. “What did you mean, he gave you the eye?”
    “I mean, during his speech, my good old reliable gaydar went ping! So I smiled at him as he went out and he smiled back. I actually think he would have stopped, but he was surrounded by about half a dozen women who were escorting him out, talking sixteen to the dozen to him.”
    Betsy laughed. “His wife might not have liked that, Goddy,” she said.
    “His wife wasn’t at the banquet. She was at a meeting of chapter presidents.”
    “During the banquet ?”
    “I know. It was supposed to end before the banquet started, but they got caught up in something—no one knows what—and had their meal sent up.”
    “Still, I can’t believe he’d actually give you the eye with people who know Allie watching.”
    “Unless he knew he would never be seeing any of them again,” Godwin pointed out. “One of the women told me they walked him out to his light blue Lexus in the parking garage, and he drove off, never to be seen again.”
    “You really think he’s gay?”
    “Well, my gaydar is generally reliable, but I’d never met him, and never even seen him, until the banquet last Friday evening. Have you?”
    Betsy thought. “Now I think about it, no.”
    Goddy shrugged. “Maybe his gate swings both ways. You can feel her out about it, if you like. May I send her up?”
    “Oh, I don’t know—” Betsy didn’t mind so much that Godwin saw her in dishabille, but Allie Germaine was a different story. Betsy looked around at the mess in the room, at her ratty bathrobe, and recalled that she hadn’t had a tub bath since the accident. “My hair, this place—” she said.
    “I’ll get you a comb. And this place isn’t so awful, really. Here, let me put some things out of sight.” He picked up the cat and a trashy novel and headed for the bedroom with them.
    Betsy called after him, “But what if she expects more than I can do?”
    The door closed and Godwin came back. “Oh, please don’t say no! She’s sitting right in the shop, ruining the ambience.” He rummaged in her purse, coming up with a comb, mirror, and lipstick. “Please, please?” He handed her the comb and said, “She’s so upset and sad, and she says you’re her last hope.”
    Betsy looked despairingly at her face in the little mirror, then over it at Godwin’s pleading expression. “Oh, all right. Send her up.”
    Godwin waited until Betsy finished with the comb and began applying lipstick, then hurried out. Betsy put away her knitting and tried to smooth some of the wrinkles out of the robe with her fingers. It was too big on her so it covered the even more wrinkled nightgown under it, and the ugly plastic casing under that. She had barely gotten past the wince of pain any movement of her leg brought when there was a light tap on her door, which Godwin had left ajar.
    “Come in, Mrs. Germaine!” she called, and braced herself. She was sadly certain she would not be able to help this woman.

Four
    T ONY Milan had read the story in the Star Tribune —the first time in a long time that Tony had read a newspaper for more than the sports and comics—and watched two follow-up stories on the morning and evening news. He learned that Robert Germaine, Account Executive of the National Heart Coalition, had run off with a check for over twenty-four thousand dollars. The check had been presented to him by the Treasurer of the National Committee of the Embroiderers Guild of America. It had been collected by EGA for women’s heart research. Germaine had last been seen getting into his car in the parking ramp at the Hotel Internationale in downtown Minneapolis, to which he’d been escorted by five members of the local chapter. The police were looking for him. There was a photo on page six of the newspaper that Tony recognized as a copy of the one that was on the wall of the third floor of the Heart Coalition’s headquarters in a long row of executive