A Quilt in Time (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery) (23 page)

“You and me both.”

A knock sounded on the door that led to the garage. It opened before Harriet could say anything, and Detective Morse came in, her expression grim.

“Oh, thank heaven,” Connie whispered.

Harriet stood, and the rest of the women followed suit. She moved out of the small space where they’d been huddled. Lauren eased toward the dining room.

“Anyone care to explain why there are bombed out cars sitting in your driveway? I just got a call telling me a military bomb squad was arriving and the FPPD aren’t to touch anything.” Morse turned to look into the face of each woman. “Anyone want to tell me anything?”

“We know almost nothing,” Harriet turned to block Morse’s line of sight into the dining room. “We were in the dining room having coffee and cake when my driveway blew up.”

“Why were you all here?”

“Lauren and I went to the women’s shelter to hang curtains my aunt and Mavis made. The rest of us are all working on quilts and pillowcases for them, too.”

Lauren had made her escape, and Harriet could only hope she was concealing the flip chart and its pages.

Morse’s radio crackled. She took it off her belt and turned a knob on its top, adjusting the volume so only she could hear it. She listened with it pressed to her ear for a moment then clipped it back on her belt.

“We’ll be in here for a while so they can clear your driveway. The men in your lives have been stopped at the bottom of the hill. They expect us to be in here for an hour, so you all have plenty of time to explain to me what’s really going on.”

Mavis cleared her throat.

“Before you start accusing Harriet of bombing our cars or, at the least, causing them to be bombed, let’s take a look at the facts. Someone killed Sarah’s fiancé and possibly beat her up in the process. We’re all friends of Sarah’s. Naturally we’re interested in what happens to her, but we haven’t done anything to warrant this sort of treatment.”

Morse closed her eyes and took a deep breath then let it out.

“I’m sorry if I came on too strong, but since I’ve been in Foggy Point, every time there’s been a major crime, you all have been in the middle of it. You’ve been lucky so far, but if you keep this up, someone is going to be hurt or even killed.”

“So you’re saying it was our fault a storm knocked out the power and the road last winter, trapping us in town with a killer?” Mavis asked. “That wasn’t our idea of a good time, you know.”

“We’re not reading the crime page of the local paper looking for opportunities,” Aunt Beth added. “Each time we’ve been involved in something, it’s because we couldn’t avoid it. For instance, when your best friend is murdered, it’s hard not to ask a few questions.”

“I get it. I really do. These are people you know. You want to help them. What I want is for you all to not be the next victims. Let the police do their job. It’s what you pay all those tax dollars for.”

Harriet went to the sink and filled the teakettle.

“Can you get paper cups from the garage shelf?” she asked her aunt. “Our mugs are still in the dining room…” She looked at Morse. “…and I’m guessing you don’t want us near that big window.”

Carla went to the refrigerator, found the carton of chocolate milk and refilled Wendy’s sippy cup. Wendy had been clutching the cup when Carla had scooped her up and brought her to the kitchen.

“You guess correctly,” Morse said. “Now, let’s get back to why you’re really here.”

Lauren had returned; she gave Harriet a slight nod.

“We
were
talking about what happened to Sarah,” Robin admitted finally. “We don’t have any insider information, so it was all speculation. We’re worried about our friend. Surely, you can understand that.”

“None of us believe Sarah killed Seth,” Connie offered. “Even if she was there when he was killed. She could never have killed him.”

“Why do you say that?” Morse asked.

“You saw her, didn’t you? She was beaten nearly senseless, and her arm is in that contraption. If she would let him do all that, why would anything change?” Connie finished with a sigh.

“Everyone has a breaking point,” Morse told her, echoing what DeAnn had said previously.

“When we spoke to Sarah in the hospital the first time, she was still talking about getting married to him,” Harriet said as she put teabags into the paper cups her aunt had brought in. When the water boiled, she poured it into the cups. Mavis handed the first round to Robin, Connie, DeAnn, Lauren, Aunt Beth and Detective Morse while Harriet refilled the kettle and set it on the stove to heat again.

Morse dropped a spoonful of sugar into her cup.

“Can any of you think of anyone else who would want Seth Pratt dead?”

Harriet turned from the stove.

“We don’t know Seth Pratt. He kept Sarah isolated from us. Most of us wouldn’t have known the man if he passed us on the street until the Foggy Point Senior Center open house; and we didn’t exactly have deep personal conversations there.”

The rest of the Loose Threads nodded as she spoke.

“He used to come into Tico’s,” Beth told Morse. “Jorge has talked to him—as a customer only. Naturally, when Sarah was in the hospital the first time, we asked him a few questions, but Jorge didn’t know anything useful.”

“Let me be the judge of what’s useful,” Morse said.

“You’d do better to talk to him directly,” Beth said.

Morse stirred her tea.

“Whether you know something or not, someone’s clearly worried about you.”

Harriet poured the next round of tea water.

“I can’t imagine we’re that much of a threat to anyone.”

Morse’s radio crackled again; she adjusted the volume, listened then said, “Put him in a patrol car at the bottom of the driveway for now. I can’t leave until the bomb squad gives the all-clear.”

The Loose Threads looked expectantly at her as she turned her radio down.

“They found a blonde guy lurking in the bushes out by the street when they were evacuating your neighbors. That sound like anyone you know? Patrol says he’s mid-to-late twenties, slight build.”

“Possibly Sarah’s…” Harriet paused. …whatever he is. Adopted stepbrother—Josh? He’s blond, isn’t he?”

“There was a blond boy at the senior center open house,” Mavis suggested.

Morse looked at Harriet.

“And you have no idea why he’d be lurking in your bushes?”

Harriet held her hands up in front of her. Morse’s gaze shifted to Lauren.

“Don’t look at me,” Lauren protested. “I never met any of Sarah’s family other than at the open house, and I didn’t speak to any of them personally. Him being the bomber does come to mind, though.”

Morse glared at Harriet.

“If you women know something, I
will
find out.”

“Okay,” Connie said and stood to her full five feet to emphasize her point, “I know you’re just doing your job, but I speak for the group in saying we’ve had enough. We just had our cars blown up in the driveway and aren’t allowed to see our husbands or find out how bad the damage is. We’ve answered your questions to the best of our ability. If you can’t stop harassing us, you’re going to have to go sit in the other room.”

Morse pursed her lips but didn’t say anything. She topped off her cup of tea and sat down at the table.

“Anyone have any show-and-tell?” she finally asked.

Harriet had to turn back to the sink to avoid making eye contact with Lauren and bursting out laughing.

Lauren pulled her tablet from the bag she’d rescued from the dining room.

“I have pictures of the curtains we hung,” she said with a straight face.

The group crowded around and watched as she flipped through the pictures. They were carefully shot so as to not include a view of the outside or any other identifying information.

“They look real nice,” Mavis commented when they were through.

“It’s kind of you to help the shelter out like that,” Morse said.

“We’re kind people,” Lauren told her.

“Speaking of the shelter,” Harriet said with a glance at Lauren, “we’re going to do a joint quilt project with the women there and the people at the senior center.” She explained the plan she’d made up on the fly when they visited Sarah. “It was all I could think of to try to get Sarah involved in something.”

“I have to admit, it was ingenious,” Lauren said. “Sarah took the bait—she can feel superior to the others and she’s behind helping make money to buy more creature comforts for the place.”

“I guess we can make that work,” Mavis said.

“Anyone need a ride to go car shopping tomorrow?” Harriet asked. “Mine is safe and sound in the garage,” She looked at her aunt. “I started Uncle Hank’s truck last week. If you want, I can drive that, and you can take my car.”

“That’s very sweet of you to offer. I may take you up on it, though I hate driving something that big.”

Morse looked around the kitchen table at them.

“I’m sure anyone who had a car out in the driveway is going to be car shopping tomorrow. One of you should probably call Bill Young and warn him he’s about to get a bunch of insurance claims.”

Harriet held up her cell phone.

“Anyone?”

Aunt Beth took the phone and called Foggy Point’s most popular insurance agent to tell him to brace himself.

It was another forty-five minutes before Terry entered from the garage, followed quickly by Aiden, Jorge, Connie’s husband Rod, and Robin’s and DeAnn’s husbands.

“Your driveway and yard are clear,” Terry said. He stood with his arm around Carla. “The forensic people are collecting samples and printing what’s left of your cars, so they’re off-limits for a little while longer. We’ll know more when the lab guys are finished, but it looks like someone put a pipe bomb made from fertilizer and motor oil under each car.”

“So, they weren’t trying to kill us?” Harriet asked.

“Doesn’t look like it. They could have waited to detonate until you were in your cars if they’d wanted to hurt you. They could have built bigger bombs or filled them with nails or other shrapnel, too, but they didn’t. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say they were trying to give you people something else to think about besides the murder of Seth Pratt.”

Robin threw her paper cup into the wastebasket under the sink.