4 Plagued by Quilt (7 page)

“And you found him this morning, didn’t you?” Ardis said. “And helped the authorities with their ‘inquiries,’ as they say.”

“I believe they only say that when someone is a suspect,” Ernestine said. “Oh my.
Are
you a suspect, Kath? I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Ernestine. I’m not a suspect.”

“It sounds as though you aren’t sure you liked him,” John said.

“I
think
I did. I think I
wanted
to. He sure had most of the kids eating out of his hand. But it’s funny, Nadine said the same thing about the Holstons when I asked her if
she
liked Phillip. She thought he was doing a fine job, and she hired him, of course. But she said the Holston jury was still out about him.”

“And Holston money makes the Homeplace go round,” Mel said.

“You only knew him by his coffee and the smelly cheese he ate,” Thea said. “And Kath thinks he was ‘interesting.’ But we don’t know him or the situation well enough to start throwing around motives.”

“I was only making an observation,” Mel said. “Legitimate and with no strings attached to any particular powerful, wealthy family. But money is a legitimate motive. We all know that. Money talks. Money giveth and money taketh away. The power of money corrupts.”

“Yeah. Okay. We get it, Mel,” Thea said with exaggerated punctuation. “I’d like to make an observation, too. The sheriff’s department is not totally incompetent.”

“The point of your observation being what?” Ardis asked.

The meeting was not turning out to be as tidy or friendly as our meetings usually were. It might have helped if Ardis had clued me in to her bait-and-bait tactic beforehand. Or if Thea had left her attitude in a book on a shelf back at the library. They eyed each other, Ardis’ back straightening and Thea’s shoulders squaring up. I wondered who would blink, then decided to step in before one of them spit instead.

The door to the den opened, and Joe stepped in first, accompanied by an air freshener jingle from the television.

“Sorry to interrupt, but you might want to come see this. The sheriff’s coming on the news in a few seconds. Suspect in custody.”

“We’re not interested in Andy Taylor,” Thea said. “Or Opie or Otis.”

“Our sheriff,” Joe said. “Haynes.”

“You changed the channel?” Ardis squawked. “Daddy never lets me do that. He squawks!”

“I only flipped it for a second. Your daddy’s in the bathroom. Come on, or you’ll miss it.”

Chairs scraped, and we crowded into the den after Joe
in time to see footage of two deputies, walking away from the camera with a suspect between them, heading for a side door of the courthouse.

“Who is it?” someone farther in the room asked.

A “hush” came from behind me.

Clod’s posture and gait were recognizable on the right, and it looked like Darla on the left. They each had a hand around the upper arm of a woman who walked between them with her head bowed. Either we’d missed the suspect’s name in the newscaster’s narration of the footage or it hadn’t been mentioned yet. The camera cut to Sheriff Haynes and we all leaned closer, despite the television’s volume being turned up to the level of a bellow. Then Ardis’ daddy tottered back into the room and the bellowing really began. It ended with Joe flipping the channel, Sheriff Andy Taylor tousling Opie’s hair, Ardis settling her daddy back in his recliner, and her daddy telling the rest of us to clear out, sit down, or bring him a beer.

“I do not think beer is strong enough for what ails this posse,” someone behind me said—the same someone who’d shushed us from behind moments earlier. “I will consider giving you some helpful management pointers. As soon as you apologize.”

“Geneva!” I said. Out loud.

I
wasn’t facing anyone—anyone alive—when I had my “Eureka moment,” as Ardis called it, so no one but Geneva saw me wince.

“They are all staring at your back,” Geneva said, “except Ardis’ older-than-dirt daddy. He is throwing daggers at your back with his eyes. And I have a confession to make. I have felt like throwing daggers at your back with both hands.”

“Come on along, all of you,” Ardis said, trying to be heard over Aunt Bee, but not so loud that she irritated her father. Avoiding that was a lost cause.

“Who
are
all these people, Ardie?” he shouted. “And why’d they let all the flamin’ fireflies in the house?” He was looking toward Geneva. She preened.

“There are no fireflies, Daddy,” Ardis said, kissing his bald head. “Ten, you stay with him, will you? And Kath, you come on back to the kitchen and we’ll all try to behave better.”

“Well, this is awkward,” Geneva said, following me. “Now you will not be able to call me by name when you pretend to talk to me on your phone. You did not think of that when you started bandying my name about, did you? Our perfectly good ghost communication system
scuttled like so much rubbish or some poor soul’s left arm in a family garbage dump. And that was only your first mistake. I have been keeping track of your mistakes for you, and you can thank me later. But what are we going to do now? Of course, you could call me Ginger. That is what my daddy called me.”

She followed me like a swarm of gnats—nattering gnats that I wanted to swat. I sat down at the table and tried to look normal, but probably didn’t achieve it because my shoulders kept creeping up to my ears.

“Debbie just texted,” Mel said. “The suspect we saw with Cole? It’s Bell’s ex-wife.”

“Oh no,
no
,” I said. Of course that was Grace we’d seen walking between Clod and Darla.

“Calling me by my daddy’s pet name was merely a suggestion,” Geneva said. “There is no need to be so theatrical about your aversion to it. People stare at you enough as it is. On the other hand, you could text me and I can read over your shoulder.”

I sat up straight. Texting could work, and Geneva and I definitely needed to talk, if only so I could tell her to hush up and we’d talk later. “Um, guys? I need to get hold of someone. But I also met Grace Estes—Phillip’s ex—yesterday, and I immediately liked her. I know that doesn’t count for squat and, yes, I saw friction between them, but I can’t believe she did this.”

“Why not?” Thea asked.

“She was still in love with him.” As soon as I said that, I knew it was true. That was the loss and the longing—the love and pain—that had jolted me when I touched her shirtsleeve after we collided. She might have been needling him, maybe maliciously, but she did still love him.

“That means
less
than squat,” Mel said.

That was true, too.

“Hang on, though, okay? Um, discuss it among yourselves. This won’t take long.”

I pulled out my phone and tapped,
WHYB? WNTT. YH red hair?

“My eyes are going to cross,” Geneva said in my ear. “Please use all the letters God gave you.”

Sorry.

“I have to tell you,” she said, interrupting before I could type more, “that after the way you bludgeoned my heart, a mere ‘sorry’ is an unconvincing apology. It lacks effusion.”

Effusion later
.
Where have you been? We need to talk. You have red hair?
It was like conducting a weird, reverse séance; instead of waiting for a spirit to rap, I was tapping messages to a ghost. It was also exceedingly uncomfortable, because she hovered right behind me and I was beginning to shiver.
Why don’t I call you and not use your name in the conversation?

“Do we have time to cover your many and varied queries?” she asked.

Not really. Not now.

“You are laborious and all thumbs with that thing.”

TTYL.

She blew an unpleasant gust down the back of my neck.

Sorry. Talk to you later. Walk back to the shop with me?

“
A-Y-G-I-A-S-T-Y-A
?” she said, pronouncing each letter slowly, clearly, and annoyingly.

?

“Do you see why I think that is annoying?”

Yes.

“I will translate. Are you glad I am speaking to you again?” She pronounced each syllable as slowly, clearly, and annoyingly as she had the letters.

Yes
.

“I will be gracious and assume that the hesitation of your thumbs before you answered was due to the upwelling of emotion you are feeling at having me once again at your side. I am overcome, myself, and feel I must go meditate. If you need me, I will be in the other room with Ardis’ nearly dead daddy and your burglar beau.”

My burglar beau
. He wasn’t one, really. Or much of one. Lately.

“Kath?” Ardis said. “Did you learn anything useful?” From the way she and the others looked at me, I got the feeling that they hadn’t discussed anything among themselves while I’d been texting.

“Possibly.” Would knowing that Geneva’s father called her Ginger help find her in the records? She didn’t strike me as a Ginger.

“That’s unhelpfully nonspecific,” Thea said. “Are we working on anything or not? One case? Two cases? I’m thinking no cases. Let’s eat Mel’s galette, tell her what we think of it, and hit the road.”

“Not yet.” I got up and went to the head of the table again. “Let me lay both cases out for you.”

“Excellent, now the way I see it—”

“Ardis, let me take it from here, please.”

She closed her mouth and sat back, hands folded in front of her. The model of comportment for all the third- and fourth-grade students she’d taught before she saw the light and became manager of the Weaver’s Cat.

“Start with the name,” John said. “Start with
Geneva
.”

“Yes. Maybe there’s something subconscious working
with that name, and that’s why you suddenly felt compelled to shout it,” Ernestine said. “Eccentricity aside.”

“Hold on.” I took a pen from my purse, and then rooted through the messenger bag, finding the notes and notebook, but no blank paper. Great preparation.

“What do you need?” Ardis asked.

“Nothing. I’ll use these.” I turned the pages over and tapped their edges to square them. I wrote
Geneva
on the back of the first and
Phillip Bell
on the second and moved them aside. “Geneva is a name I first heard out at the Homeplace. When I stayed in the cottage, in passing—that’s as close as I can get to pinning it down. But”—I tapped the paper with Phillip’s name on it—“Phillip seemed to know the name, too. He was working on something—researching something he was excited about—and from his reaction to the bones, they meant something or tied in to that research somehow. It’s also possible that the last name we’re looking for is Bowman. Geneva Bowman. But I’m not sure.”

“I love the way you throw specifics around,” Thea said. “
Somehow
they really
seem
to do
something
for me.”

“That sounds like an old song, doesn’t it?” I tried a smile on Thea. It didn’t make the difference of a dent or a dimple on her brown face. “But that’s how we always start, isn’t it?” I said. “Someone did something. Somewhere along the line we get involved. Somehow we figure it out. We start with unknowns. This time we just have a few more than usual. We don’t know the name of the body in the dump. We don’t know the name of the person who put it there.”

“We don’t know that it
is
a body,” Thea said.

“True. Hang on.” I wrote
who buried the body
on another sheet and slid it out of the way.

“And we don’t know if the person who buried the—arm or whatever—was in any way responsible for why he or she buried it.” Thea clucked her tongue. “A ‘few’ unknowns. Yeah.”

“What if it
is
only an elbow or an arm,” Ernestine said, “and it was a farming accident? Or an amputation?”

“So you’d toss it in the household dump?” Mel asked. “Ernestine—ugh. I think you know I’m not the squeamish type, but that gives me the willies.”

“They’re theories, though,” I said. “And coming up with theories is one of the things we can do tonight.” I jotted
accident, amputation
,
and
Bowman
on the Geneva sheet.

“We aren’t entirely without specifics, either,” John said. “We don’t know who the bones are, but we know
where
they are. That gives us the name Holston, and the name Holston gives us a place to start looking.”

“Back to the lords of the manor,” Mel said. “Did they have an abundance of money and position back then, too, or was the house and land they had typical for the period?”

“Their fortunes might have ebbed and waned,” John said, “and that’s easy enough to check. I assume there are Holston family records of various types at the Homeplace. Phillip was working there. Isn’t it likely that’s where he started his research?”

“I asked Nadine what he might have been working on,” I said. “Other than familiarizing himself with the site and jumping into the Hands on History program, he wasn’t into anything that she was aware of.”

“And we aren’t going to find an entry in Great-Aunt
Sally Holston’s diary saying,
So-and-so was buried too shallow in the family garbage dump this morning, and the Ladies Aid Society came for tea this afternoon.
” Mel ran her fingers through her spikes, then splayed her hand on the table. “There’s something wrong about the whole body-in-the-dump thing and it’s got me rattled.”

“That’s because you’re kindhearted,” Ernestine said, patting her hand. “You can’t imagine disposing of someone that way, but your spikes aren’t prickly enough to keep the pictures out of your head.”

“But there might be clues in the records,” John said. “We can sift for them while the archaeologist is sifting the dirt around the bones. Does Nadine know the materials well enough to help us narrow the scope of the search? Surely she’ll appreciate our help in solving this puzzle.”

“I would think so. She’s understandably stressed about
everything
going on out there, but if we approach her the right way, I think she would welcome the help.”

“We can take it to her in the form of a serious proposal. Directors are like captains and admirals, aren’t they? Happiest when dealing with that kind of formality?” John rubbed his hands as though happiest when anticipating a good formal declaration of intent.

I jotted
Holstons
on the back of another page and shoved it aside.

“It seems to me we need to find Phillip’s research notes,” Ernestine said. “If we find them, won’t we find out what he knew about Geneva?”

I pointed the pen at her. “Absolutely, Ernestine, and if he was any kind of historian, he made notes about where he found the information.”

“But will Nadine let us look through his office? And the computer in his office?” she asked. “That might be trickier, due to privacy concerns.”

“I’ll add it to the proposal,” said John.

“Nice device, John,” Mel said when she saw him tapping notes into his phone.

“I’m an old sea dog and I love new tricks.”

“When are you going to upgrade, Red? You’re archaic there, with your papers strewn all over.”

“I’ve got my own trick. Show you in a minute.” I wrote
Phillip’s research
on the Phillip Bell page. Then I almost started another page with a note about searching the cottage at the Homeplace. But I didn’t, and I told myself it was because we were going to have enough paper and ideas on the table and it had nothing to do with the notion creeping around the edge of my higher motivations—the notion that if Nadine drew the line at some of us looking around the cottage and through Phillip’s belongings for information he’d stowed there, then I knew a window, out of general view, that was easy to slide quietly open. And I had it on the reliable authority of my friend Not-Really-a-Burglar Joe that entering without breaking wasn’t technically, too awfully, criminal. Especially if you did it only once.

Ardis noticed my hesitation. She’d been quiet—listening and giving me encouraging prompts. Now she had one eyebrow raised and looked at me with her
mm-hmm
face. I took evasive action.

“So, on to Grace Estes,” I said, and all ears perked up. All eyebrows returned to normal levels. “They’ve arrested her, and I know we don’t know what evidence they have against her, but I think they’re wrong and that we still don’t know who killed Phillip. This morning Cole
Dunbar said they didn’t know
what
killed him. They couldn’t identify a weapon. I thought it was an animal, a dog or something. When I found him . . . it looked like . . .” My hand went to the side of my neck. “It looked like multiple bites, to me. As though something had bitten and raked. Deputy Dunbar said it wasn’t, but . . . the attack was vicious.” The fingers against my neck curled into a fist and I bounced it off my lips a few times before continuing. “I hope Grace wasn’t capable of doing that. Here’s something else, though. I called Phillip late yesterday afternoon and a woman answered. They were, well, it sounded like they were having a good time. If you know what I mean.”

“For heaven’s sake,” Thea said, “who answers the phone at a time like that?”

“The point is, I don’t know who the woman was. I thought it might be Grace.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew they’d been married. Nothing more than that. It could’ve been anybody.”

“We need to know who she was,” said Mel. “I’ll start a few conversations at the café, see what I hear about Phillip. And Grace.”

“Good.” I turned to Ernestine. “I know you don’t know Grace, but if she isn’t released on bond right away, would you go talk to her? Not to pump her for information. Not obviously, anyway.”

“Don’t you want to do that yourself?”

“If she’s out, I definitely want to talk to her, but I think Deputy Dunbar would find a visit from me highly suspicious.”

“He would, dear, because he isn’t nearly as obtuse as he lets on. But, oh my, I just thought of something. I can
dress up like Aunt Bee and take cookies for Grace and her cellmates, if she has any. That would be a comfort, don’t you think? And a hoot?”