Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_01 Read Free Page A

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    On the other hand, she’d spent her one night in Las Vegas at the Fremont Street light-and-sound show and having a drink in a beautiful old bar, followed by a phone call to her sister and then turning in early.
    When she saw an exit sign pointing to the Grand Canyon, she did give a moment’s thought to giving the Japanese tourists a thrill by throwing herself off the rim. But she didn’t. In her experience such low thoughts, if not yielded to, tended to be brief and followed by something more interesting.
    Later, crossing Iowa, Betsy remembered reading somewhere that while men are scared of birthdays ending in zero, women are frightened by birthdays ending in five. Certainly Betsy was. Fifty-five is no longer young, even when considered while you were in good spirits. Fifty-five can see old age rushing toward it like a mighty tree axed at the root. All too soon it would be crash: sixty! And if she reached retirement age with no savings to speak of, she might live out the last years of her life in one small room, fighting off the roaches for her supper of canned cat food.
    But Betsy had also read somewhere that there were good jobs going begging in the upper Midwest, and she had her sister who had kindly offered to put her up until she got her feet under her again. Okay, so her sister lived in a small town; that small town was near the Twin Cities. That meant two newspapers, two job markets, right next door to one another. Twice the number of chances to start over.
    And a ferocious Minnesota winter might be interesting, another adventure. After all, Betsy had grown up in Milwaukee, where the winters could also be hard.
    Betsy pushed the accelerator down a little, and the car responded. Good little car, acting as if it didn’t already have a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. Ahead was the road sign saying WELCOME TO MINNESOTA. She hoped it didn’t smell of pig, like Iowa.
    Sometime later the freeway forked. Thirty-five-E went to St. Paul, 35W came into Minneapolis. Margot hadn’t mentioned this; her directions said to take I-35 into the Cities, and Highway 7 to Excelsior. Betsy chose Minneapolis; she had a notion that Excelsior was west of the Twin Cities and Minneapolis was the western twin. Right? She was pretty sure she hadn’t already missed an exit onto Highway 7; certainly she hadn’t missed an exit sign saying EXCELSIOR. A pity she had left the road atlas behind in an Omaha motel. She would stop at the next exit and buy a map.
    She saw a little strip mall just this side of an exit, featuring a store whose sign advertised GUNS LIQUOR PAWN. Despite this warning that the owner liked to live dangerously, she got off and made her way back to it on a frontage road. She didn’t go in; a store next door to it added to the explosive mixture by selling used snowmobiles and those noisy adult tricycles with puffy tires. But people who bought vehicles might also want maps.
    They did, and the store sold them. The man behind the counter helped her plan a route to Highway 7. “Thirty-five don’t cross 7,” he said. “So what you do, you stay on 35W till you get to 494, take 494 west to 100, which only goes north from there, and it’ll give you an exit onto 7. Go west and look for a sign.” He moved a grubby finger along the map as she watched. It seemed clear enough.
    â€œThanks,” she said, taking the map and folding it on the first try—Betsy was a traveler.
    â€œYou bet.”
    Amazing, they really did say “you bet” in Minnesota, just like in that book on how to speak Minnesotan Margot had sent her one Christmas.
    Back on the highway, Betsy drove ten miles over the speed limit—she had to, if she didn’t want to be rear ended—and was so excited at the approach of the end of her journey that she didn’t really notice that though it was not yet September, the ivy climbing the wooden sound barriers on 35W was turning an