4 Plagued by Quilt (20 page)

“If she does not know what she means, how does she expect you to know?” Geneva asked. She’d been floating near the ceiling but now came down and huddled in one of the chairs.

“Are you talking about the whiteboard?” I asked.

“Not the board itself,” Ardis said, “but the idea of bringing the board in, and arranging the chairs just so, because that’s how we work best. You know what I mean. It’s an acronym.
S
something. Standard operating procedure.
That’s
what it is and that’s what we have. SOP.”

“Stolen orange pencil?” Geneva asked. “Subterranean octogenarian panda?” The whiteboard always made her grumpy. She’d told me that the clean, white expanse of the board called to her.
It calls, but at the same time, it mocks me cruelly,
she’d said.
Because I can never answer.
Now she grumbled as she watched us. “Perhaps Ardis means we have stinky, odiferous peonies.”

I flapped my peony pink baby hat at her.

“Is there a fly in here?” Ardis asked.

“Silly old poop,” Geneva said.

“Use a newspaper or a swatter,” Ardis said. “Don’t risk ruining the only hat you finished in the past seven days.”

“One of these days I’m going to blow everyone’s mind and bring in . . .” I tried to come up with a fabulous number of sweet baby hats. “How about a dozen?”

“Four should be fine. With a reasonable goal, you’ll feel good if you overshoot, and the rest of us will be surprised.”

“I’ll try my best.” I’d read recently about several women who had each, personally, knitted a thousand baby hats in a year. I knew I didn’t have that kind of knitting drive, but surely I could start pulling my weight in Fast and Furious. “Toss the marker over, will you? Yow!” Geneva had risen from her chair and the marker went right through her. It didn’t hurt her, but I flinched anyway. I’d never got used to seeing objects or people pass through her. And of course it annoyed her.

“Stop oppressing phantasms,” she muttered. “If you will excuse me, I am going upstairs to spend time with Argyle, a creature who is never snide, overbearing, or pedantic. On the contrary, he is always sweet, obedient, and purring.” With that, she floated out of the room.

“What was that about?” Ardis asked. She stared at the doorway and rubbed her eyes.

“Nothing, I was thinking of a couple of questions to start us off,” I said. “And oh boy, do you smell what’s coming up the stairs?”

Mel came in with her knitting bag and an insulated carafe. John followed with his bag and the source of the spicy, herby aroma on a covered plate. If we ever lost Mel as a member of Friday’s Fast and Furious, we’d be sadder and each of us several pounds lighter. She’d assigned herself the duty of bringing refreshments every Friday afternoon and had given herself the title Year-round Undersecretary of the Marvelous.

“Yum.” Ardis leaned over the plate, eyes closed.

“That’s my name, and you’ll never wear it out,” Mel said. “I brought something different today.” She thumped
the carafe down on the Welsh dresser we used for refreshments, and took the plate from John. “It’s savory, not sweet like me. Yo, Ernestine, what’s the holdup there? You need me to come light a fire under you?”

Ernestine came in with a nearsighted smile for each of us and one for the dress form standing in a corner. She had a second carafe in her hand, but no knitting bag.

“Did you lose something downstairs?” Mel asked her.

“I might have put my bag on the kitchen table,” Ernestine said. “Or the counter.”

“I’ll get it.” If I ran down and back up, maybe the calories in Mel’s treats wouldn’t be so noticeable.

“Any sign of stragglers?” Ardis asked when I dashed back up.

“I’m not that late,” Thea called from the kitchen. “And I’m not deaf. Give me a minute.” We heard her puffing as she climbed the stairs. When she reached the top, she sagged in the doorway. “I practically ran here, and these shoes are not conducive.” She dropped herself into the nearest comfy chair and John brought two cups over to her.

“A choice today,” he said. “Cucumber lemonade or unsweetened chai latte.”

“Both.” She took a sip of the latte and then a swig of the lemonade. “That’s better. Who’s got hats?”

Starting our meetings with show-and-tell was SOP. We took turns laying our contributions on the low table at the center of our half circle, like so many poker players adding chips to a pot. Ardis kept count for us. She went first, with a stack of sky blue hats.

“Six,” she said, looking smug. “A little off my game this week. Daddy was fractious.”

Ernestine added the pale peach and the lilac hats
she’d knitted while waiting to see Grace, and three in orange tabby stripes with cat ears. “They’re Argyle hats,” she said.

John counted out four in aqua. Thea put in three of her red-and-white-striped hats.

“Sweet potatoes and cayenne,” Mel said, laying out four hats in shades from deep orange to orangey red. “I’ve been working on a sweet potato biscuit recipe this week.”

I put my one puny pink hat next to theirs.

“A bit of ‘slow and tell’?” Mel asked. “That’s okay, Red. We know your needles take a rest when we’re on a case. What’s our total, Ardis?”

“Debbie sent three,” Ardis said. She laid three creamy yellow hats on the table, pulled a pencil from behind her ear, and totaled her running tally. “That makes six hundred forty-two, plus Joe’s if he shows. We’re ahead. But that’s good, because I expect we’ll slow down as the holidays approach.”

“Well,” I said with exaggerated exasperation, “some of us better not get any slower, or she’ll be frogging what we already have, instead of adding to the pile. There—” I dropped my act. “I saved you the trouble and made the dig myself. Sorry I’m slow, guys. I’ll make up for it by making the run to the hospital this month.”

At the start of the challenge, the group had pictured taking their one thousand hats to the hospital in one impressive delivery at the end of the year. Ardis said she’d even toyed with the idea of dressing up as a stork for the delivery. But when hats started overflowing plastic bins in the workroom, we realized the hospital would have the same storage problem, and we’d started making deliveries once a month, sans beak and feathers.

“I’ll run them over Sunday morning,” I said.

“You are nothing if not generous, Red,” Mel said. “Now we’ll sit back and knit toward our personal goals, while you fall farther behind in yours by bringing us up to speed on the investigations.”

“You’re swell, Mel. Which case do you want first? Hot or cold?”

“Let’s go with hot,” Ardis said. “So it doesn’t turn cold, too. Any objections?”

There were none.

“Good.” Ardis settled back in her chair. “Tell them about the hackle. Unless someone knows who swung the blamed fool thing, finding the murder weapon is probably the biggest piece of news.”

A floorboard creaked in the hall, immediately followed by the sound of light feet hitting about every third step on the way up, a muttered expletive, and then Joe’s voice.

“Finding the blamed fool listening at the door might be news, too,” he said. “Why don’t you come on in, Cole? We’ll teach you to knit.”

C
lod did his best to be in control of the situation in the TGIF workroom. It must have been hard for him, though, standing starched, stiff, and stern in front of people in comfy chairs knitting baby hats nonstop while he harangued.

“If you have information pertinent to the murder of Phillip Bell which you have not turned over to the sheriff’s department, then be advised that you can and will be brought up on charges of obstruction of justice.”

“Silly, outmaneuvered policeman,” Geneva said. She’d heard the ruckus of the brothers’ entrance and floated down from the study to enjoy it.

Ardis didn’t make it easier for Clod. She was still knitting, but no longer sitting. She’d risen as soon as Joe prodded Clod into the room. She stood three feet from him, needles clicking, looking him straight in the eyes. Being his height, as well as his former third- and fourth-grade teacher, gave her an edge in any confrontation.

Joe slung off his backpack and sat in the chair next to mine. He took his knitting from a pouch in the pack, tossed three hats the color of water in a clear, mossy mountain creek on the table, and started clicking away on another.

“Glad you got here when you did and found him there,” I whispered.

“Not an accident,” Joe whispered back. “I’ve been following him.”

“If you know the whereabouts of,” Clod continued, “or if you are in possession of material evidence that pertains to the murder of Phillip Bell, which you have not turned over to the sheriff’s department, then be advised that you can and will be brought up on charges of obstruction of justice. A weapon, for your information, is material evidence.”

“Coleridge Blake Dunbar, explain yourself,” Ardis said. Crossed arms and a tapping foot were implied; she kept knitting. “What in heaven’s name do you think you were doing listening at our door?”

Clod didn’t go down with the first punch. “Ms. Buchanan, please explain your statements
Tell them about the huckle
, and
Finding the murder weapon is probably the biggest piece of news
.”

“Hackle,” Ardis said, with moist, guttural emphasis on the first syllable. “If you’re going to listen at doors, then listen accurately.”

“He doesn’t stand a chance against her,” Geneva said. “She reminds me of my darling mama when she used to take my daddy down a peg or two.” She floated over to stand proudly beside Ardis.

“Ms. Rutledge, did you find a weapon?” Clod’s voice betrayed him. He was tiring. Or tiring of us.

“Sorry, no. Did you?”

“Then will someone please tell me what
finding the murder weapon
is supposed to mean?”

“Tell me why you were listening at our door, and I will,” I said.

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Clod blustered. “The answer’s simple enough, though. I knew you and your gumshoe group would be meeting this afternoon, because it’s your standard operating procedure.”

“Ignore him and his simply outrageous prattle,” Geneva said.

It would have been so much fun to give her a high five for that remark. I settled for the universal A-OK sign. If Clod chose to interpret that as sarcasm for his answer, that was up to him. My conscience was clear.

“My answer’s simple, too,” I said. “I didn’t
find
the weapon, any more than Grace told you where
you
could find it. She told you a likely place to
look
, which isn’t the same as telling you where it is.” I waited for him to agree. He didn’t. He made an annoyed face. “I didn’t find the weapon, but I found out what it probably is and where it came from.” I waited for him to look interested or gratified. He didn’t. He looked skeptical. “I think the weapon is a hackle, Deputy, and a hackle is missing from the storage collection at the Homeplace.”

“God rest him,” Thea said faintly, putting her hand to her neck.

Mel whistled.

“That sounds . . .” Joe stopped knitting and swallowed. “That sounds like it could be right.” He laid his needles and wool on the table, and then he told Clod what a hackle was and what it looked like. “And if you swung it just right and hit the jugular?”

Clod made notes, some of the starch gone from his face. “Is that lemonade over there?” he asked. “May I have a glass?”

“No,” Ardis and Geneva both said. Ardis blinked a few times and rubbed her ear with the heel of her hand.

“Fine,” Clod said, “whatever. Ms. Rutledge, if you’ll please come with me? I need to know where this hackle was.”

“I’m staying right here. You can find out anything you want to know about the missing hackle and who had access to it from Nadine. I’m only a volunteer out there and I’m in the middle of a meeting here. Our SOP is knitting baby hats and I’m behind. So if you don’t mind?”

“Sorry,” Geneva said, “only posse. Step outside, pardner.”

“We will notify you when there are new developments in the case, Coleridge,” Ardis said.

Clod was too irritated, too professional, or too afraid of Ardis to grumble. He left, and soon afterward, Joe packed his knitting needles and followed.

Geneva left, too, but not before making me want to put my fingers in my ears. “I’ll be at the bottom of the stairs,” she said, “standing on patrol, surveilling our premises, and seeking out poltroons. Sayonara, old pal.”

I waited until all footsteps and ghosts had receded, then I put my own knitting down and went to the white board.

“Back to our regularly scheduled murder investigation—take a look at these two questions.”

Across the top of the board, I wrote:
What drives an ordinary person to kill? What drives an ordinary person to think killing will fix a problem?

“Those questions keep running through my head,” I said. “I have no idea if thinking about them will help us solve Phillip’s murder, but I wanted to put them out there. Since we met Tuesday night, we’ve each pretty much worked on our own quilt block. Maybe these questions will help us bring the individual blocks together.
There don’t appear to be any monsters loose in Blue Plum. An ordinary person killed Phillip.”

“An ordinary person with a hackle,” Thea said. “When were you going to tell us the small but interesting fact that you’d identified the weapon?”

“I was about to, and then we were interrupted. But let’s get started now. Let’s share the information we’ve uncovered and see who it points to.”

“Grace,” Thea said. “The most important piece of information we’ve uncovered about her is that the police think they’ve got a case. We can’t discount that. They might actually be right. Even the horrible hackle doesn’t disprove it. She volunteered at the Homeplace. She could have had access, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” I drew a square on the board and wrote
Grace
in it.

“I like your question up there,” Thea said, “about who would think killing someone would fix a problem. I want you to know I
have
been looking for someone besides Grace who might think killing Phillip could fix a problem. I didn’t find anyone, and Grace had good reasons to think his death fixed a problem. Believe me, I read the police reports and the divorce decree. Phillip Bell?” She shook her head. “Not a good man.”

“But they
were
divorced,” Ernestine said. “Why would she kill him now?”

“Why did she follow him to Blue Plum?” Thea countered. “We know she did that. That doesn’t imply clear thinking to me. Kath says she still loved him. That really doesn’t imply clear thinking. I think we know enough. This time the police have it right. But—if you need more, Grace is still Phillip’s beneficiary. And would you like to know if she has money problems?”

“She told me herself that she did.” I wrote
Phillip
,
abuse
,
divorce
, and
money
in the “Grace” block.

“That’s your quilt block, Thea. There’s nothing wrong with the facts in it. But it’s isolated. I want to see the other’s blocks before drawing a conclusion.”

“You don’t think the police have already looked beyond Grace and come back to her?” she asked.

“So far I haven’t seen or heard anything that makes me think they have.” I drew another square on the board. “But we aren’t getting in their way, so I don’t see any problem with continuing. Here’s another block. Who wants to go next?”

“Make that block
Wes Treadwell
,” John said. “I’m interested in him. I’d like to know more about him.”

“You were going to buy him a cup of coffee,” I said.

“You can’t learn enough about a man over a cup of coffee to hang him for murder,” Thea said.

“He blew me off, anyway,” John said. “But it’s the way he blew me off that caught my attention. I got the feeling he’d looked me over, calculated how valuable I might be to him, and dismissed me. Three words came to my mind—‘adroit,’ ‘practiced,’ and ‘slippery.’ I have to confess, though. I had a hard time ignoring the Spiveys’ opinions of Wes before forming my own. I don’t know whether that’s good, bad, or of no consequence.”

John’s brow furrowed and Mel handed him a cup of cucumber lemonade. While he revived himself, Ardis caught my eye.

“What are Shirley and Mercy doing mixed up in this?” she asked.

“Shirley’s ex-husband knew Wes in California before Wes moved here. Her ex told her a story about Wes fleecing homeowners out there. The twins don’t have any
details, though, and the only thing I know for sure is that if
Wes
is ever murdered, Shirley’s ex should be the number one suspect. I know all this because the twins dropped by my house last night.”

That earned a chorus of sympathetic noises and served to deflect more Spivey-related questions from Ardis.

John drained his lemonade and looked restored. “I also made a start on our search for the victims in the dump. That’s the cold case, I know, but we need to think about the possibility that Phillip’s research touched on the victims and also touched a nerve that snapped. That’s conjecture, but Kath said something Tuesday night about ‘what ifs,’ and that’s mine.”

“It’s a good ‘what if,’ John.” I twiddled the marker in my fingers. “What do you think I should I write in Wes’ square?”

“I don’t think we know enough yet,” John said.

“At least Wes
does
drink coffee,” Mel said. “I see him in the café two, three times a week. He likes to shake hands and talk. He comes across as somebody people should know. Except for the Limburger-cheese-and-liverwurst incident, I might’ve seen Bell in my place two or three other times total. Call me petty, but it made me not like him. Not enough to kill him, though. What we’re still missing here is someone who
really
didn’t like Phillip Bell. I’ve done a lot of listening over the past few days. Dropped into a lot of conversations. Asked people outright about Bell. I heard nothing. The man didn’t mix. That’s what makes me think it had to be someone associated with the Homeplace who killed him. No one else knew him well enough.”

“I think you’re right, Mel, and that goes back to the
second question I wrote up there. ‘What problem did Phillip pose and who thought killing him would fix it?’”

“He was a problem for
Grace
,” Thea said.

“He might have been the same kind of problem for Fredda Oliver.” I told them what Joe had told me about why Fredda left Asheville.

“You think she fell into a similar relationship with Phillip?” Ernestine asked.

“Yeah, I do. I’m almost positive it was Fredda who answered Phillip’s phone the night before he died.”

“The other night you thought it might have been Grace,” said Thea.

“That was before I met Fredda and heard her voice. I think she’s a pretty tough woman, too, and strong from the type of work she does out there at the Homeplace. There’s nothing wrong with that, but she’s also sneaky. And remember, Cole says she’s a good liar.”

“This sounds like a promising lead,” Ardis said. “The problem will be finding out what she was doing Tuesday morning. How do we do that?”

“Engage her in conversation,” said Mel, “and bring it around to the murder, which shouldn’t be too hard to do. It’s on everyone’s mind. Then say something like, ‘Oh, it’s so awful. I can’t believe I was at home doing something inconsequential like drinking coffee while that was happening. What were you doing, Fredda?’ Only try to make it less obvious. Probably not as easy as it sounds.”

“It doesn’t sound easy at all,” Ardis said. “What we really need is another death, while Grace is in jail, so that she’s obviously eliminated.”

“And of course you don’t really mean that,” Ernestine said.

“I absolutely do not. Kath, whatever you do, be
careful. I don’t think you should get into a situation where you’re alone with Fredda.”

“I won’t.” I drew another square, and put Fredda’s name in it. Below her name I wrote
Phillip
,
abuse
, and
liar
. Then I went ahead and made squares for Nadine and Jerry.

“Do we know enough about Nadine or Jerry to put anything in their squares?” John asked. “Thea, have you turned up anything on either of them?”

“Nadine earned her degree ten years ago, after raising a son and a daughter and then divorcing her husband. Jerry and Phillip knew each other in grad school. Different disciplines, but some of their classes overlapped. Grace and Jerry’s sister were roommates.”

“Do you know why Nadine got divorced?” I asked. “Or if Jerry and Phillip were friends?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you found anything to back up the Spiveys’ story about Wes?” I glanced over at her. “You had coffee with Wes yesterday, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but give a girl a chance. It’s only been a few days.”

“It’s not that you started with Grace and stopped there?” Mel asked.

“No, it’s
not
. It’s that I’m working on the library’s budget and I’m spending most of my time trying to find ways I can avoid cutting money from the collection, cutting hours, or cutting staff.
Okay?
”

“Whoa, Thea, of course it’s okay,” Mel said. “Calm down.” Then she turned to me and said, “Don’t let her near a hackle anytime soon.”

“Not funny,” Thea snapped.

“Budgets are nasty things,” said Ernestine. “Let’s
have Mel’s refreshments and then move on to our cold case.”