Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_01 Read Free Page B

autumnal red.

2
    Margot was selecting colored silks for the T‘ang horse. She had her original needlepoint of it on the table, still in the frame, which had no glass in it. “I remember it was ten-oh-seven,” she murmured to herself.
    â€œWhat?” asked Shelly.
    â€œThe blue color of the horse, I remember it was ten-oh-seven, ten-oh-five, and ten-oh-three.” She tried a skein of 1007 Madeira silk, which was a midnight-blue shade, against the neck and shoulder of the horse. “Still is, it seems.”
    â€œYou have the most amazing memory,” remarked Shelly, coming to look.
    Margot smiled and preened a little, but said nothing. She had cut a blank canvas to the right size; it was on the table beside the horse, the olive-green skein on it. She put the blue silks beside the green.
    But the creamy gold of the mane was harder to match. It was an odd color, not cream, not yellow, not gold. Nothing on her racks came close enough. She closed her eyes, thinking, then said, “I’m going upstairs for a minute.”
    Shelly waved assent and noticed that Sophie raised her head at the sound of the back door opening. Was it suppertime already? Shelly chuckled; Sophie was fat and cosseted now, but she had a long memory and was determined never to miss a meal again.
    Margot was back in three minutes, holding one partly used and two whole skeins of pale gold silk aloft. “I knew I had some left over!” she cheered. She gave Sophie a brisk rub just to share the joy. Sophie raised her rump and her bushy, tan-and-gray tail and purred ecstatically.
    Shelly laughed. “You and Sophie are so easy to make happy!” she said.
    â€œIf I had gone up there and not found this, we’d all be singing another song,” said Margot, but pleasantly, because she had gone up and found it. She put the golden skeins beside the blue on the canvas. “Now we need chalk white for the legs and saddle.” She went to the silk rack and began examining the whites.
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    Highway 7 was a divided highway, mostly under repair. Betsy wove her way among the white and orange pylons, concentrating fiercely in order not to switch lanes in the wrong direction and end up facing an oncoming truck. At the same time she was looking for a sign—and there it was: EXCELSIOR, with a warning that it was a left exit. Betsy followed the lane, which led up and over the highway and a railroad bridge. Then there was a thicket of high bushes, a red apartment building, and she pulled up to a stop sign marking an asterisk of intersections.
    Ahead were a little post office and the tree-shaded clapboard houses of a small town. Atop a steep hill on her left was a multiroofed Victorian house. A sign said it was the Christopher Inn Bed-and-Breakfast.
    On the right was a parking lot with a small carnival Ferns wheel in it, though no other rides were visible.
    A block later, at Water Street, was another stop sign. She was supposed to turn here, but which way? To the left the street was lined with old-fashioned, false-front brick stores; to the right, a block away, was a big blue lake with sailboats on it. Toward the lake, that’s what the directions said. She turned right.
    Just short of the lake was Lake Street—yes, that checked. A bar and grill with a wharf theme marked the comer. HASKELL’S, said the sign, which also checked. Betsy turned right. Two blocks later the lake disappeared behind a sprawling apartment complex of gray and white clapboards. She pulled over across the street from it, in front of an old, two-story, dark redbrick building. The middle one of the three shops had a pastel-colored sign hanging over the door: CREWEL WORLD, the letters done as if cross-stitched in various colors. From the D came an out-sized needle pulling yarn in a matching color. She had arrived.
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    Something made Margot glance up as a car pulled to the curb. It was an older white hatchback, thickly layered with road