Knit Your Own Murder by Monica Ferris

understand! Thank you!”
    â€œYou’re welcome. How familiar are you with the way her business was run?”
    He sank back. “Only with the rental stuff. She had all kinds of properties: houses, stores, apartment buildings, even a lumberyard.” He shrugged. “And, of course, she was a real estate agent, too. I didn’t know how big-time until I saw she was going after the Water Street property. That thing is going to cost millions to buy and build. Millions.”
    â€œWas she overextending herself to try for it?”
    â€œOh, I think she must’ve been, yes. Or, no. Well, maybe.” He laughed at himself. “I really don’t know. I thought I knew her business affairs pretty well, but I probably didn’t.”
    â€œWas she secretive?”
    He twisted his shoulders in discomfort. “Not exactly. People thought she was . . . blunt. And of course she was. She’d say right out what she thought about things, if she was willing to talk about them at all. If she didn’t want to talk, she wouldn’t say anything. Like, when I first started to work for her, I thought she owned a couple of houses and an apartment building on the north side of Minneapolis. Then I found out she owned a couple of houses in Uptown. And a store. Then more houses in south Minneapolis, a small lumberyard in Golden Valley—and a start-up construction company up halfway to Duluth. Whenever she widened my responsibilities, I’d find out she owned more property. The latest was I found she had this plan to build a multipurpose building in Excelsior. She never hinted at something, she’d just spring it on me.” He shrugged, smiling wryly. “I think she liked to surprise me.”
    Betsy was busy writing all of this down. Then she looked up from her pad to ask Chaz another question. “She usually struck me as angry or impatient. Was she like that with you?”
    â€œOh yes,” Chaz said. “That was her at her core. I think she was born mad.” He grinned. “I got used to it. She barked a lot, but she never bit me.”
    â€œAnd she paid you well.”
    â€œYes, she did. She even bragged about me, in her own way. ‘At least Chaz doesn’t shout at tenants for being late,’ she’d say to a building manager she was about to fire. ‘He’s a chameleon, he knows how to get along with anyone, even me,’ she’d say to someone asking how I kept on working for her.”
    â€œHow do you know she said those things about you if she never said them to your face?”
    â€œSometimes she’d leave the door to her office open just a little bit. She never praised me to my face, but she did that eavesdropping-enabler thing enough times that I began to realize it was intentional.”
    His nose twitched. Was that the lovely smell of biscuits baking?
    Betsy nodded, made a note, and said, “Now to the hard part: Did anyone you know truly hate her?”
    Chaz laughed. “Oh God, yes. People she evicted would write terrible things about her on their Facebook accounts, or in anonymous letters, or even in spray paint on walls or the doors of their former houses or apartment buildings. People she outdid on business deals, too. Well, the business people didn’t resort to spray paint. They’d sue. I think she kept one of her attorneys on speed dial.”
    â€œDid any of these people threaten her life?”
    â€œFrequently.” He smiled, remembering.
    â€œHow serious were these threats?”
    â€œThey were mostly just venting. Maddy didn’t take themseriously. Except some of the people who threatened to sue. She got right on those cases. Only one actually came to court while I worked for her, and she won that case.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that.”
    â€œDid she ever sue anyone?”
    Chaz nodded. “A couple of times, mostly small claims cases. One big one, but it got