Cutwork by Monica Ferris

mostly a desk job, or at least she was no longer engaged in foot pursuits. To get the job, she’d passed the sergeant’s exam.
    Then came the catch. Excelsior had a no-fraternization rule. If Jill and Lars had been married, or even engaged, there would have been no problem. But they weren’t. So unless one of them quit the police force—which wasn’t going to happen—they couldn’t date anymore. Well, if Lars passed his own sergeant’s exam, then they could date, but that wasn’t going to happen, either, because Lars refused to take it on the grounds that he loved the variety and action of patrol.
    Interestingly, it never occurred to either of them to break the rule and see each other secretly. This was first because they were Scandinavians, who were second only to Germans in their passion for obeying the rules; but also because Excelsior had a citizen spy network second to none, and they never would have gotten away with it.
    Which brought Jill to her second serious disappointment: Betsy Devonshire.
    Jill had been introduced to Betsy by Betsy’s sister Margot. Margot had been Jill’s friend for seven years, her best friend for nearly four. Then Margot had been murdered, and Jill drew closer to Betsy for Margot’s sake. The tie had strengthened when Betsy uncovered Margot’s murderer. It was perhaps because the tie had never been questioned or even tested that Betsy’s betrayal of Jill’s trust had been so shattering.
    That’s how Jill saw it, as a betrayal. Even though she was a civilian, Betsy had successfully involved herself in criminal investigations and so, in Jill’s mind, had a special status. So naturally Jill had told Betsy that a juvenile had been arrested for the murder of Robert McFey.
    And Betsy, like any common gossip, had told the Monday Bunch meeting in her shop. Which would have been all right, but she had let slip that Jill was the source of her information. Within hours it was all over town.
    The fault was partly Jill’s, too; she should never have told Betsy about the arrest. In fact, she hadn’t specifically told Betsy not to repeat it. So all right, the fault was mostly her own. The thought was enough to make her dinner a cold, unpleasant lump in her stomach.
    Chief Nygaard had not been pleased. Jill had been reprimanded a time or two when she first joined the force, but for nothing more serious than mistakes any rookie might make—and far fewer of them than normal. Never before had an error of hers been called to the attention of the chief.
    Even now, remembering his words (which were few) and his tone (which was cold), Jill felt a painful blush rise from her throat and spread upward to her ash-blond hairline.
    It said much about Jill’s integrity that she hadn’t decided never to see or speak to Betsy again, but rather had gone to see her and in a calm voice expressed her disappointment.
    But it would be a while before she could feel the same warm attachment.
    And dismayingly, she couldn’t go for comfort to Lars.

4
    Betsy tried to continue arranging the baskets, but at last shrugged and shoved some yarn in the remaining three of them, scattered them all around the shop, then went upstairs to feed her cat and herself. Like Jill, she didn’t much appreciate her meal, and had no appetite for dessert.
    After dinner, to remind herself she’d turned from proprietor of her shop to a student in it, she changed into jeans and a pink cotton shirt before she went back down to wait by the door for people to come to an evening class.
    Charlotte Norton arrived first, as befitted the teacher. Char, a trim woman in her early forties with dark brown hair and hazel eyes, had been a customer of Crewel World long before Betsy had inherited it. Betsy had discovered that Char knitted and was fond of small, quick counted patterns, which she did as gifts for friends. But Char also bought a lot of white, green, and natural linen and a large number of balls of number five and number seven DMC Perle