4 Plagued by Quilt (25 page)

“
Hon!
Did you have any idea that
your
Sam was
my
great-great-uncle?”

“No—”

“I’ve been thinking about it all night, and I wonder—should we have a memorial service for Mattie and Sam? Daddy and I would be honored to bury them in the family plot. What if they’ve been restless spirits all these years? Then burying them in consecrated ground will give them peace.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” I scrubbed Argyle’s ears and fed him.

“But we haven’t found Geneva. You don’t think that’s because she’s the one who shot Mattie and Sam, do you? Her own brother?”

“
No!
Ardis, no, I don’t. She didn’t.”

“You’re so sure?”

“I am, and if you’ll trust me, I’ll prove it. But later.”

“All right. I do. Now, what prompted your midnight e-mail asking about the hackle? My answer is no, I did not tell anyone.”

I told her about Zach’s visit and Clod’s dismissal of
the hackle in his car as a prank. I also told her about the banjo and the file.

“Cole might have taken the situation more seriously if you’d shown him those as well.”

“I don’t think so, or if he had, he would have accused Zach of taking them and lying about finding them in his car. I’ll take the banjo back, and I’ll give the file to John, if I see him at the Homeplace today. But, Ardis, do you see what it means if no one knew about the hackle except us and the police?”

“I do, but let’s wait to hear from the others before we scare ourselves like that.”

*   *   *

Geneva sat brooding in the window seat in the study. “You might as well take my badge away,” she said. “I’ve failed.”

“Failed at what?”

“Devising a trap to catch the Hackler. I had such hopes, only to see them dashed on their own petard.”

“Hm. Well, I think coming up with the
idea
of a trap was super.
I
didn’t come up with it. You did. And if someone else in the posse can come up with the actual trap, we’ll still owe the inspiration for it to you. You played a key role.”

“You are not just saying that?”

“No.”

“Do you think the others will like the idea of a tiger pit with spikes?”

“They’ll probably go for something more practical. Geneva, I’ve got some questions I’d like to ask you. I want you to take your time answering them, though, so I’ll write them out and leave them here on the desk.”

“Someone else might read them if you do. Leave them on the top of the bookcase. You never look up there to see the dust, and no one else will, either.”

“Good idea. I’ll be back around lunchtime. You can tell me your answers then, or later, or not at all. It’s up to you. And if you find them upsetting, then forget them altogether, okay?”

“Can I look over your shoulder while you write?”

“If you want, but I don’t want you to answer them right now.”

“Then I will stay over here.”

I took a piece of notepaper from a desk drawer and wrote my questions.
Did you ever think about the possibility that you have relatives living in Blue Plum today?
How would you feel if Ardis could see and hear you?
If we can get down to your bones, would you like them brought up and buried in the cemetery?
The last question, prompted by the conversation with Ardis, was hardest for me to write.
If we bury your bones, will I ever see you again?

*   *   *

The closer I got to the Homeplace, the more on edge I felt. When I parked and got out of the car, I saw Jerry and Fredda laughing together near the barn and I wondered how well they knew each other. Nadine met me at the door and I second-guessed the sincerity of her smile. Wes was there, and I not only questioned his constant presence but caught myself assessing his tanned forearms for muscle tone and weapon-swinging ability. Shirley and Mercy seemed edgy, too. They might have picked it up from me. Or they might have been anticipating the end of Hands on History and the stress of leaving me alone with the Plague Quilt. Zach hadn’t shown up, again. That worried me.

Checking my phone every few minutes for answers to the hackle question didn’t help my nerves. Over the course of the morning, all the answers came back negative—none of the posse members had told anyone the murder weapon was a hackle. I looked up from reading the last response, and saw Nadine watching me from the door to the auditorium. She probably saw me jump. I used the excuse of helping Carmen with a French knot to break eye contact with Nadine. But in turning to Carmen, I saw Wes passing the other doorway. He paused, lifted his chin toward Nadine, and moved on.

When John arrived to continue his research, he stopped in the education room to say hi, and I had a moment of panic. Why hadn’t it occurred to us that if Phillip had been killed because of something he’d found, then John was in danger for trying to follow Phillip’s trail? I motioned him over to a corner of the room and asked him.

“It did cross my mind,” he said.

I cast uneasy glances around us, feeling like a cheap actor playing a badly trained spy. “Let me show you something.” I’d brought Phillip’s file in a messenger bag. I held the bag open and let John see inside while I scanned the room for prying eyes.

John gave a low whistle. “Is this the rest of the documents? As the young people say, this is huge.”

“I know. And at first I was thrilled. Then I began to wonder.” I told him about seeing the file in Phillip’s cottage, then about getting it from Zach and about the file and the hackle in Zach’s car.

“What was the point of leaving them in the boy’s car?” John stroked his clipped white moustache. His eyes, the color of the ocean he’d left when he came home
to the mountains, moved from one possibility to another as he thought. If I’d worried about adding to the wrinkles around those eyes, I needn’t have bothered. He was puzzling, and anyone could see the energy that gave him.

“May I give you another piece to consider?”

His eyes snapped to mine. “Please do.”

“I shouldn’t have been in Phillip’s cottage to see this file. That’s a fact, plain and simple. Here’s another fact—Fredda was there that night, too. I don’t know what she did while she was there or
why
she was there. I don’t know if she saw the file. If she did, she might have gone back and taken it, or she might have told someone else about it. That’s totally conjecture.”

“A flourish of embroidery that’s more of a distraction. There’s a word that springs to mind, though. ‘Cahoots.’”

*   *   *

A question from one of the students about the Plague Quilt gave me the idea for how to set Geneva’s trap.

“M
s. Spivey and Ms. Spivey,
are
the names on your Plague Quilt people who died in the cholera epidemic?” Carmen asked. “Because wouldn’t it make a cool research project to go find their graves?”

“Do you know how many church cemeteries there are in the county?” Nash asked. “And family cemeteries?”

“Hard work is its own reward,” Carmen said.

“Some of them are labeled,” Shirley said, reflexively bringing her arms in to protect her sides. She was safe, though. A table stood between her and Mercy’s elbow.

“You might’ve missed the significance,” said Mercy, “of the stitched paths leading from some of the coffins.”

“You can follow them with your finger,” Shirley said, “and recognize the churches. Rebecca was an artist with thread.”

“Like us,” said Mercy.

*   *   *

I called Ardis before I left the Homeplace and asked her to set up an emergency meeting of the posse. When I got back to the Cat, Debbie was behind the counter and told me the others were already waiting in the TGIF workroom.

“You don’t mind staying another hour?”

“My budget is happy to do it and so am I.”

I dashed up to the workroom. Thea, Ernestine, John, Ardis, and Joe were there. Mel couldn’t make it, for obvious reasons. I stopped at the door before running up to the study.

“Joe, do you mind telling Ernestine and Thea about the stuff in Zach’s car? I’ll be right back.”

“Lunch hour ticking away,” Thea called after me.

Geneva and Argyle were in the window seat, feet and paws tucked under them. It was a scene I’d grown used to and would miss terribly if . . .

“The posse’s having a quick meeting,” I said. “I figured out how we can set the trap. Do you want to come hear about it?”

“You can report to me later,” she said. “Right now, Argyle and I are discussing metaphysics. We are thinking, therefore we do not wish to be disturbed.”

I crept quietly back down to the workroom.

“I want you to know I get it,” Thea said as soon as she saw me. “I get it that if no else but us and the police know about the hackle, then you think the murderer has to be the one who left the hackle in the kid’s car. But why would the murderer do that? To frame him? That’s the clumsiest frame job I’ve ever heard of.” She sat back and crossed her arms.

“You’re right. Absolutely.” I joined them in the half circle of comfy chairs. “That’s why I think we need to look at it another way. Remember the question I wrote on the whiteboard Friday—
What kind of person thinks killing someone fixes a problem?
All right, then what problem did leaving the file and hackle in Zach’s car fix? Because Thea’s right, it makes no sense as a frame job. Grace is already in jail and the police aren’t looking for anyone else.”

Thea opened her mouth and pointed her finger at me. Nothing came out of her mouth until she’d closed it and opened it again. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that might make me think Grace is innocent.” She crossed her arms again. “Unless Grace is working with someone on the outside.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Instead I’m supposed to believe the murderer has a vestigial conscience?”

“What conscience?” Ardis asked.

“Kath thinks the murderer feels bad about Grace being in jail, but instead of confessing and going to jail in Grace’s place, the murderer left a ‘message’ for the police—a message that only the murderer could have left—so the police will know they have the wrong person.”

“Except the police didn’t interpret the message right,” Ardis said.

“That’s because the murderer doesn’t know how Cole thinks,” said Joe.

“But why leave the file as well as the hackle?” John asked.

“To tie the hackle to Phillip and the case,” I said. “Otherwise the hackle’s just a hackle.”

“But Cole didn’t see the file,” Ardis said.

“I know. And that might have been a mistake on my part, but I think Cole still wouldn’t have read the message right if he’d known about the file, and he would have caused trouble for Zach.”

“So, what’s this meeting about, then?” Thea asked. “We haven’t learned anything new, except that I’m willing to believe Grace is innocent. That’s major, I admit, but except for eliminating Fredda, we aren’t any nearer to figuring out who
is
guilty.”

“And what if Fredda is working with someone else?” I asked.

“Oh swell.”

“But we
have
learned something about the murderer,” Ernestine said. “He or she has a conscience, however tiny, and also isn’t familiar with the thickness of our local police skulls. Begging your pardon, Joe.”

“Much good that does us,” Ardis said. “None of the suspects are local. What now?”

“A trap.”

“Beg pardon?” Ardis spoke, but judging from the others’ expressions, she spoke for all of them. At least I knew I had their attention.

“I’ve got it all worked out. A plan, a map, a trap, voilà!—we catch a murderer.”

“Just like that,” Thea said. “Voilà! And what could possibly go wrong?”

“It involves the Plague Quilt,” I said, ignoring her. “Of course, we could turn this information over to Cole instead.”

“Let’s hear the plan.” Again, Ardis spoke for all of them.

“Quilts tell stories—”

“Rev it up,” Thea said. “Lunch hour is still ticking away.”

“Rebecca, who made the Plague Quilt, turned it into a record of the cholera deaths of her friends and family. In addition to the pretty and fanciful embroidery on it, she stitched maps showing where some of the victims are buried. They aren’t precise maps, but the places are recognizable. It gave me an idea—”

“Nutshell it,” Thea said.

I held up my left index finger, being careful not to use
it aggressively. “Fact: The hackle is in a sinkhole, along with bloodstained clothing.” I held up my right index finger. “Plan: We tell the suspects we’re researching the quilt and the epidemic, and we found a story about a young woman falling into that sinkhole and dying because no one could get her out. We tell them we’re going to send down a video camera to see if we can see anything. We hide and wait. The murderer comes and either tries to retrieve the hackle and clothing, or more likely, to put more stuff down the hole to cover them. Voilà, we trap a murderer. That’s the nutshell edition. The full-sized cedar-chest version comes with details on timing, gives tips on lying in wait, and tells how I know where the hackle is.”

Thea called her coworker at the library to say she was going to be unavoidably delayed.

*   *   *

The full-sized cedar-chest version of finding the sinkhole and hackle was edited and revised, but near enough to the truth. I rationalized any embellishments by telling myself that all good stories and quilts have them. I told the posse I’d overheard some of the students talking about a place they liked to go in the woods, to drink, mostly. They claimed the spot came complete with nature’s own garbage chute so they didn’t have to carry out empties. I’d asked them to show me what they meant, because I was interested in garbology.

“They showed you, a grown-up, where they go hide in the woods and drink?” Thea asked.

“They said I’m cool. Anyway, the opening isn’t big, but it is big enough for a hackle. Actually, it looks like the opening
is
bigger, but at some point someone shoved a rock over it and piled a few more on top, probably for
safety reasons. But still, right along the edge, is enough space to dump your bottles. When I saw it, I realized it was the perfect place to get rid of a hackle, better even than a retting pond. So I took a look.”

I told them I’d attached my camera and a flashlight to a rope, put the camera in video mode, and lowered it into the hole.

“You had rope with you?” Ardis asked.

“I went back. It’s creepy there when you’re alone. And the hole is deep. I’d hate to see anyone fall in it.” My shoulders had drawn together as I talked about the hole and pictured Geneva disappearing into it.

“And you found the hackle and the bloody clothes,” Ernestine said. “What a terrible sight.”

“Can you show us your video, Kath?” John asked quietly.

“That’s the bad news. The footage isn’t there. It’s not on my camera. I must have deleted it.” This was such a tremendous lie, but my shoulders, still drawn, spoke of such misery that they believed me, and forgave me, and Ernestine blessed my heart.

“The good news is, we don’t need to depend on a camera tied to a rope for the trap. Tomorrow afternoon we tell Nadine, Wes, Jerry, and Fredda the story about the young woman and the hole. We tell them we’ve got someone coming at seven tomorrow evening with a professional camera and lighting so that everything in the hole will show up. We make it sound as though it’s really going to happen and there’s no way for anything down that hole to hide. We need to give the murderer a window of opportunity to cover his or her tracks, but not too much time, because we can’t sit out in the woods waiting all day. What do you think? Give them an hour? Two?”

“Two ought to do it,” Joe said. “Tell them at five that it’s happening at seven. That gives the murderer time to make a plan without too much panic.”

“And a murderer who isn’t in a total panic is probably a plus.” I looked around at them. “Does this really seem doable?”

“Where do we hide?” John asked.

“There are plenty of trees and car-sized rocks,” I said. “But we don’t all have to be out there hiding.”

“The hiders can be in place before the suspects are told,” Ardis said. “That way the trap is set in case the murderer hares off immediately.”

I asked them again. “Doable?”

“Doable, definitely,” Thea said. “And if no one shows up, no big deal. There’s no expense involved and only some of us get bug- or snake-bitten. I love it. And let me be the first one to volunteer to sit in the comfort of my library and make phone calls to suspects. I mean, really, what could possibly go wrong?”

In the end, we decided several things could go wrong. But as Ernestine said, we might also set something right.