Ada Unraveled (12 page)

“Darkest secret quilted,” he repeated. “Like
the group’s name? Quilted Secrets?”

“Right. Except the name of the group seems
to have many meanings. They talked a lot about the history of
quilting, how some earlier quilts contained secrets. And…well, we
each share a secret about ourselves at the bees.”

“Sounds like women. What kind of secrets?”
He made no effort to hide his discomfort, even taking another half
step away.

“Well, for my next bee, I’m thinking of
sharing some of your strange sexual appetites. Maybe your
fascination with belly buttons.”

He laughed. He knew I was too reserved to do
that. He repositioned himself next to me, but not so cozy—more
dominating. I could read him like a book. He wouldn’t admit he was
worried.

Matt said, “So, do you have to hide a secret
in your quilt in some way? Like this one supposedly does?”

“No. Well, I don’t think so, anyway.” But
now he had me wondering. “Victoria’s quilt had been covered with
embroidered symbols, a lot of them to do with snakes, on the doors
of the houses.”

Frankly, the thought filled me with
inspiration. It would be fun to hide little secrets in my work. So
what symbol would I use most often?

Books, of course. Books were central to my
life.

He jammed his fingers into the front pockets
of his jeans. “So they’re all young, or what?”

“No, they’re all different ages. Two other
women in the group are older than me.”

Matt rubbed his chin with his left hand, as
he always did when he was contemplating. “The first square, isn’t
that Adam and Eve standing by the apple tree?”

“Yes. It’s confusing. Album quilts are
usually about the quilter’s life and I’m not getting the impression
that Ada was particularly religious. Or that any of the Stowalls
are.”

“Bible studies! I’m out of here. I need to
cut the grass, which means I’m on poop patrol. Next dog, definitely
a Chihuahua. Oh, and I got a call from Fred, guess what? Their
grandkids are moving to Texas. Trudy is practically grief
stricken.”

I looked at him. “Really? That’s hard. Well,
we know that feeling.”

This got me thinking about planning our trip
to see our son Bob and his family in Jacksonville, NC at the end of
the month. Short of cloning ourselves there was no way we could
live near all of our three sons as they were spread out across the
county. So we do our best to visit each family at least twice a
year. But our visit to Bob was very special. He was due to deploy
again, soon.

Matt turned one last time at the
doorway.

“By the way, you find out whether that guy,
Jake Stowall was related to your quilters?”

“Yes. Victoria Stowall is his widow,” I
murmured, now deep in thought about the whole strange night.

“And she held a bee a week later? Cold.
After the lawn, I’ll take the car into Hector for assessment and
repairs.” He slipped away down the hall.

Still admiring the quilt, I reached down to
pet Wisdom who was pressed against my leg, staring up at me
adoringly—or beseechingly—probably wanting a walk, or dinner…or
something I couldn’t understand. His muzzle was almost solid gray
now. Our beloved black and tan shepherd had developed bone cancer
on his nose a year ago and we’d been struggling to save him ever
since. My heart ached for him whenever I looked at the deadly bump
growing just under his left eye.

“You could start your research at the County
Records,” Matt yelled from somewhere in the house. “Find out if
Ada’s related to Adam and Eve. Could be the secret of the quilt.”
He was laughing as he went out the front door.

I drifted into our office where we had two
computers set up, and pulled up my email. I’d noticed earlier that
the list of names and phone numbers Hannah had handed me also
contained email addresses…including my own. Time to make a new
contacts list. I was thinking of naming it the Bee Women.

No reason why there should be any messages,
of course. They were probably all still asleep. I made notes about
the bee in a Word file and saved it to my hard drive and external
memory stick in a new folder I named Ada’s Quilted Secret. It
fit.

I unfolded the Stowall genealogy next. It
was huge and awkward--eighteen taped together sheets of paper. I
began looking for wall space to display it on, drifting naturally
back toward the spare bedroom where the mysterious quilt lay. It
was faintly calling to me. There was indeed a large wall we hadn’t
managed to cover with photos. Just right for the family tree. But
then the phone rang and I dropped the massive printout on top of
the quilt and scurried back to our office.

After dinner—your basic leftovers--Matt and
I retreated to our office again to review our active cases. Sunday
night was like that. Regroup for the week ahead. We were just
getting started when again the phone rang. This time it was Gerry
Patrone inviting Matt and me to a morning autopsy at the Cleveland
County Forensic Science Center. I was so surprised I didn’t respond
at first. Finally Gerry continued with her explanation.

“They’re digging Jake Stowall’s body up as
we speak. After I told my brother Tom—you remember I told you he’s
with the CCSD--about what you saw at the crime scene, well, he went
forward with a request to do a postmortem on Jake. In light of
Ada’s death, that is. And some other questions we’ve all had for
some time. And especially that it was never noted on Jake’s death
certificate, what you said about his leg. About the snake bite I
mean. They want to see your photos of the scene, Rachel, and talk
to you about anything else you noticed. Can you make it? It’s at
ten-thirty. Do you know where the county forensics center is?”

Of course I did. But I was waiting for Gerry
to take a breath so I could answer her multiplex of questions. I
was also thinking about making the return trip up to Cleveland
County which sent a chill up my spine. Thoughts of white trucks
with bulbars gave me pause.

But now that I knew the two families were
related I knew we should learn as much as we could about the
Stowalls. And the oddness of Jake’s snake bitten leg seemed somehow
tied to Victoria’s constant references to snakes in her quilt. And
maybe Ada’s quilt. Adam and Eve and the…snake.

“Let me see if Matt is available,
Gerry.”

Matt told me he had a court appearance in
the morning and that he was going with one of our apprentices. We’d
already worked it out that I would drive his truck until he could
arrange a rental replacement for my wagon. I figured he would take
care of all that with the apprentice’s help.

I returned to Gerry and said, “Matt’s busy
tomorrow, Gerry, but there may be someone else I can ask along.
There was a forensic specialist along on our walk in the woods. A
Dr. Karen Bridle.” I explained to her about Bridle and her
contributions during my recording of the crime scene. Gerry readily
agreed. “I’ll bring the duplicates of the pictures and my notes
when I come.”

“Good, that’s good. Okay, remember
ten-thirty. Don’t forget. And Rachel--could you be sure to give the
pictures and notes directly to Tom?”

Of course. This could be his big break. I
assured Tom’s big sister I would and hung up. I sent a quick text
message to Karen Bridle. Then realized I’d forgotten to ask Gerry
about the diary she’d included in the quilt—and her large check. At
least since I’d be driving my hubby’s red pickup the jacked up
trucker from hell wouldn’t be expecting me in that—that is if it
had been deliberate, if I’d really been targeted….

Then exhaustion overtook me again and I
slept another ten hours.

The monster was back!

He came and went only at night, seeking
refuge from the rains. But evil as he was, he was changing to
something worse.

Apparently he was afraid he’d be caught.
Eddie heard him using only the back door—
through which he’d
dragged his dead mother.

Thanks to the transformation Eddie was
enduring he didn’t sleep like the stoned anymore. Sometimes he
missed that. Sleep was better than shivering in your bed in
fear.

For two days now Eddie had been trembling on
his bed, listening to the nearby noises, vacillating between misery
and terror. Luke was violent even when he was sober now, throwing
things around and howling obscenities until the early morning
hours. His mind was going. There was no telling what he might
do.

In the daytime the aunts returned to feed
Eddie like little rays of sunshine emerging stubbornly from the
gray rains. They were oblivious to the danger. He worried that the
aunts would run into Luke. But it was like they had an unspoken
agreement, ladies by day, monster by night.

And redhead in the afternoon. Best part of
his day.

His big aunt had made him move upstairs a
couple of days ago, shouting,
This basement stinks!

He concurred. So now he was all set up in
the small den on the main floor, off the kitchen. It made him
nervous, being so near Luke. But the smell was definitely
better.

Luke had left. Out again to do whatever
crazy thing he did. He let his mind drift to the sounds of coyotes
hunting in the night mist as the sounds within the house
subsided.

The pretty, wild-haired woman calls herself
his lover.

A sharp noise brought him up from his sleepy
thoughts. Luke was back in the house, in the kitchen, just outside
his door. Fear seeped into his chest.

Luke wasn’t alone. Eddie heard another
woman’s voice, loud and raw outside his door. They moved away,
falling their way up the stairs, saying nasty things.

Then it grew quiet. And he waited, thinking
how tired he was of feeling afraid. Sick to death of it.

There he goes again.

Battling another barfly in his bedroom. The
raw-voiced woman was swearing at Luke. Yelling about going to the
police, just like the other one had. He heard her begin to trip her
way down the stairs, just like the other one, only this time the
foul words turn into a high pitched scream accented by a drum roll
of stairs hitting flesh.
Just like his mother.

It grew quiet again. His heart slowed from a
gallop to a canter. He lay on his bed, searching for his happy
dream-thoughts about the red haired woman.

Banging on the door! “Eddie! Get up! You
gotta help me! I gotta bury this one better. Open this stinkin’
door! I’m stinkin’ gonna beat you if you don’t open this door, you
cripple-retard!”

He should tell his aunts.

As I made my way to Monday morning’s meeting
I reviewed what I knew about Cleveland County.

On a map, Cleveland County looks much like a
saddle riding the sprawling ridge of the Peninsula Range. Larger
than its sister counties, San Diego and Imperial, Cleveland County
covers about thirty-three hundred square miles and sits almost a
mile high.

Perched on a mountain range, three
rudimentary mountain systems run north to south through this
county; Applepine Ridge on the far west, Pebble Ridge about
center-west, and a handful of bumps to the east that I’ve been told
the area natives have named Walking Foot Hills.

Two peaks, one in Applepine Ridge and one in
the Pebbles, actually top eleven thousand feet and boast the only
reliable winter ski slopes south of Big Bear Mountain.

Crisscrossing repeatedly and running north
to south between Applepine and the Pebbles are the I-13 and a broad
river. The river, named Mesa de Pala Rio, keeps the Tijuana River
from petering out entirely before reaching the city of Tijuana.

Running east and west across the county are
several minor roads that navigate the Peninsula Range in the usual
snaking turns and switchbacks, and a branch of the Union Pacific
Railroad system that was completed a year after the first
transcontinental railroad in May 1869.

The city of Pinto Springs is the county seat
and it forms its own diminutive saddle, slightly off-centered to
the north and east of Cleveland County. It is in Pinto Springs that
most of the government offices are housed. At ninety square miles
and with a population approaching one hundred fifty thousand, the
city has a fair sized police department of about three hundred
which Matt and I have dealt with before in a professional
capacity.

The county government has a sheriff’s system
twice the size of the PS cop shop. But this agency is so spread
out, north and south, that it actually takes a backseat to Pinto
Springs PD. As can be expected, between the two agencies, PSPD and
CCSD, exists the usual sometimes helpful-sometimes not
interaction.

Housed in some abandoned hospital
buildings—now fully rehabbed and nicely landscaped—the Cleveland
County Forensic Sciences Center was one of two major employers left
in the north, both of them government related.

I noted that my mood had dampened with my
arrival up on the CC plateau, in part because the weather was gray
and threatening some kind of moisture.

Supposedly because of the saddle image and
the name of the city, the Pinto Springs Homicide Unit was long ago
nicknamed the
Four Horsemen
after the biblical riders. Back
then there were four senior detectives working for the PSPD.

More recently the nickname had morphed,
however, into the
Dos Caballeros Malos
in honor of a couple
of reportedly nasty senior detectives, Learner and Mosby—the sole
survivors of a spate of budget cuts.

There were other Pinto Springs
investigators, just none of the lofty rank of senior detective.

Senior Detective Robert Learner earned his
nickname of the white horse rider, Pestilence, from the grease burn
that drapes over his nose and spills onto one cheek, the result of
a childhood kitchen accident. The unsightly scar is made worse by a
bad case of pustular psoriasis on both otherwise white cheeks.