Four-Patch of Trouble (5 page)

"I only just got the message half an hour ago," he said. "Where's Tremain?"

That wasn't possible. Half an hour ago, Tremain hadn't been a crime victim, and his shop hadn't been a crime scene to be visited by a representative of the prosecutor's office. "What message?"

"The one from my boss, telling me to come make nice with one Randall J. Tremain, owner of Monograms and best buddies with half of the state legislature."

"There's been a bit of a development since then." Too bad the prosecutor hadn't taken the initiative to talk to Tremain earlier, at Dee's request, instead of waiting for his boss to intervene. I wouldn't have had to get involved, and Tremain might still be alive. "Tremain is dead. The police are on the way."

"Seriously?" Wolfe looked eager, rather than shocked. Dee was right. He was a twit.

"Seriously. Follow me."

Dee was still standing in the conference room doorway, swatting Emma away. I made a backing-up motion with my hands, and Emma tugged Dee over to one of the chairs. I doubted they would stay put for long, but the police would be here any minute, and securing the scene would be their problem.

Wolfe and I continued to the back office. Matt had pried the edge of the quilt from Alyse's shocked fingers, and once we arrived, he escorted her back to the conference room.

Wolfe stared at the body. I caught only a glimpse of Tremain's bashed-in skull and his open-eyed face before looking away. The quilt, especially the portion tangled around his torso, was drenched in blood.

"You know," Wolfe said. "I thought it would be worse. I've never seen a dead body outside of a funeral parlor before."

"It's bad enough." I hadn't ever seen a fresh corpse either. Pictures presented as evidence, sure, but not the real thing, not someone I'd known, however briefly. 

"The blanket makes it seem like he's just napping."

"On the floor?" Quilts did usually appear cozy, but not when they were draped over a corpse. "What about the pool of blood?"

"Well, yeah, that kinda ruins the picture." Wolfe turned away from his inspection of the crime scene. "Still, this is great."

Twit.
"Not for Tremain."

"Yeah, yeah," Wolfe said, clearly unconcerned about the human tragedy. "My boss will have to assign the case to me. My first big murder trial. I've got firsthand knowledge of the scene. Plus, I was already assigned to the fraud complaints against the victim, so I've got the inside scoop on the likely suspects. Maybe I should go talk to them now, since you've got them so conveniently waiting for me in the conference room."

It figured.
Now
he was interested in Dee and Emma.

"Having met Tremain, I can tell you he undoubtedly had plenty of other enemies for you to check out. And a business partner. She's the one who found him."

"Trying to create reasonable doubt for your little old ladies?"

"Hush. They can probably hear you." I turned toward the front of the shop. "The cops should be here any second now. I'm going out front to wait for them."

The first officer to arrive was someone I knew from a stress support group we both attended. Fred Fields entered the shop in a slightly crouched position, as if prepared for someone to jump out at him. He was in his thirties, average height, and I couldn't help noticing it was time for him to start ordering his uniform in a larger size. He took crime personally, as if it were his fault for not preventing it, and he relied a little too heavily on food as a coping tool for his stress.

As soon as he saw me, he straightened. "What are you doing here?"

"It's a long story. For now, all that matters is that Randall Tremain is dead, and I don't know who did it. The body's in his office." I held up my hand to stop Fred from rushing off unprepared. "One more thing. There's a prosecutor here already."

"That was fast. I was just around the corner when the call came in."

"He was following up on a related case. The name's Frank Wolfe."

"I've heard of him," Fred said. "A local guy, came back to Danger Cove when he passed the bar. A little too gung-ho for some of us. Thanks for the warning."

I went with him to introduce him to the prosecutor. When that was done, I headed back to the conference room. Behind me, I heard Wolfe demanding that Fred sequester the witnesses to avoid the opportunity to compare notes.

"Take it up with the detective, Bud Ohlsen," Fred said. "I'm just supposed to secure the scene."

I wanted to say we were all too much in shock to be conspiring anyway, but it would have been a lie. I definitely wanted to compare notes. We might be able to identify some better suspects than Dee and Emma before Wolfe's theory could gain any traction.

At the moment, all I knew was that I hadn't killed Tremain. Unfortunately, I couldn't even prove to the police that I'd been unconscious at the time of the murder. A syncope event didn't leave any distinctive marks or biological evidence behind, unlike a stroke or heart attack. If asked for an alibi, I'd have to either refuse to answer without my attorney present, which never boded well, or admit to having been in the building, alone, at the time of the murder.

Did everyone else in our group have alibis? Dee and Emma and Matt had been together when Tremain was killed, so they should be able to vouch for each other. Alyse had gone outside to smoke and might have an alibi too if she'd been seen out there. If the killer wasn't one of the people at the meeting, who could it be?

A hint of dizziness reminded me that finding Tremain's killer wasn't my problem.

I waved at Fred. "I'll be in the conference room with the others if you need me."

Wolfe turned to Fred, who was unrolling yellow police tape. "I'm betting I can get a confession before we leave today."

Fred looked over his shoulder at me with an expression that clearly said Wolfe was an idiot. I nodded my agreement and turned toward the conference room. As I approached it, two paramedics, one male and one female, came through the front door. I pointed them toward Tremain's office, even though there was nothing they could do for him.

I followed them back to the office and waited until I heard them conclude Tremain was beyond their help. "Excuse me. Perhaps you could look at the woman who found him. She might be in shock."

The female paramedic seemed to be in charge. She nodded for her partner to take his supplies and go find their other patient.

I led him back to the conference room and pointed to Alyse. Not that there was any doubt about who the prospective patient was. She was in the chair she'd been sitting in before, hugging her ribs and rocking forward and back. Emma was patting her on the shoulder, making soothing sounds. Matt was in what was my seat before, chatting quietly with Dee about the upcoming quilt show.

Emma let the paramedic take over the care of Alyse and returned to her seat across from Dee.

Before I could confirm they all had alibis, Wolfe breezed into the conference room. "Could I speak with you for a minute, Counselor Fairchild?"

It was tempting to refuse. I hated it when people called me "counselor" outside of the courtroom. The ostentatious politeness, needed to maintain at least a semblance of decorum inside the courtroom, felt artificial and pretentious in the real world. Wolfe obviously didn't realize there was a difference between the two settings. He'd learn eventually but not from me. I could be as formal as he was, if that was what it took to keep everything from going south.

"Is it absolutely necessary, Prosecutor Wolfe?"

His triumphant expression told me he thought he knew something I didn't, something that gave him an edge. "I thought you'd want to know who killed Tremain."

The senior paramedic pushed Wolfe out of her way and addressed her partner. "Can your patient walk to the doorway? I've got the gurney, but it won't fit inside the room."

The other paramedic helped Alyse stand up. She leaned heavily on him as she crossed the room and climbed onto the gurney. She didn't look good.

"Is she okay?"

"She'll be fine," the male paramedic said. "Someone needs to keep an eye on her for a while, though, and she's refusing transport to the county hospital. I'm going to take her somewhere quieter to see if I can change her mind."

The two paramedics wheeled Alyse out to the back corner of the shop, where the four-patch quilt hung.

Once they were out of earshot, I turned to Wolfe. "You can't possibly know who killed Tremain. And there's even less chance you have all of the evidence."

"There's really only one possibility. You didn't do it, and I wasn't even here when it happened. That leaves your clients, Dee and Emma. The victim even had a letter on his desk, accusing him of fraud and threatening him. It was signed by your clients. That's plenty of evidence for a jury."

"Dee and Emma wanted him in jail. They didn't want him dead."

Wolfe shrugged. "So it wasn't premeditated. They still killed him when they realized you couldn't negotiate a deal."

"Dee and Emma weren't the only people in the meeting."

"You mean the reporter and the business partner? No motive."

How blind did Wolfe have to be to discount a business partner? "Alyse's reputation would have been damaged if Tremain was convicted of fraud. She's much better off with him dead."

"I considered that. Discarded it just as quickly. Did you see what an emotional wreck she was at losing her partner?" He winked at me. "But I do appreciate the heads-up about your clients' defense theory."

Nausea crept into my stomach. Not because I'd given anything away but simply because I'd let him draw me into the argument. "It's too early to be developing defense theories. Or filing charges."

"There will definitely be charges filed against your quilters, Counselor. I'll make sure of it, once I'm officially assigned to the case."

I thought I had enough time to make one last stab at changing his mind before I risked passing out again. "Your theory just doesn't make sense. Where did Dee and Emma get a bed-sized quilt to drape over Tremain? I can tell you one thing for sure—they didn't bring it with them to the meeting. I would have noticed. It wasn't dragged in from a display in the shop either. I saw the quilts out front when I arrived, and none of them were anything like the one on the body. The closest match is to the four-patch on the back wall, but it's still there."

"Tremain could have had the quilt in his office."

I hadn't seen any other quilts stored back there, but Wolfe was probably right. It could have been a particularly valuable quilt Tremain had been keeping far away from sunlight, or it could have been a new arrival that needed to be processed. I couldn't remember if there'd been a price tag affixed to it. All I could picture right now was the blood seeping into the quilt.

The arrival of two more police officers, a young one in uniform and an older one in a plain suit, probably a detective, distracted me from the grisly memory. They brushed past us, even as Wolfe was telling them he'd already solved the case.

*   *   *

Half an hour later, Wolfe called me out of the conference room, announcing I was to be interviewed first. It was the best news I'd had all day. It suggested the detective wasn't as convinced of the quilters' guilt as Wolfe was.

He took me to Alyse's office, which had been commandeered by the detective. Wolfe left to keep an eye on his prime suspects and to make sure Matt knew his name had an
e
at the end.

The uniformed officer was young and blond with an open, trusting face. It was hard to tell exactly how tall he was, since he seemed to be in constant motion, bouncing on the balls of his feet, but I thought he was an inch or two below average.

Behind Alyse's desk was a man in a suit, presumably the detective Fred had mentioned earlier, Bud Ohlsen. He was older than the uniformed officer, with salt-and-pepper hair, and much larger too, tall and solid but not fat. Alyse's chair, perfect for her rail-thin body, was much too small for him, and he made his position even more precarious by leaning back with his hands locked behind his head. He seemed to be staring at the ceiling, as if it held the answers to who had killed Tremain.

The younger man waited for me to choose a chair and then sat beside me. He took out a notepad to write down my contact information before asking me what I'd been doing when Tremain was killed.

I rattled off the basic information as if I were dictating a statement of facts for a court brief and then waited for a reaction from the detective behind the desk. He kept me waiting for several minutes while I wondered if he really was contemplating what I'd said or if he was simply bored. Or perhaps it was just a ploy, his own twist on the fictional Columbo's "just one more question" trick.

Did the detective think I'd be so uncomfortable during the prolonged silence that I'd volunteer incriminating information? It might have worked on someone who was less experienced and more guilty, but I didn't have anything to confess. At least, nothing relevant. My private health issues had nothing to do with Tremain's death.

The detective finally seemed to notice I wasn't rushing to confess to murder. He dropped his hands from his head and leaned forward. "So, you were indisposed at the time of the murder. Is it possible someone came into the shop and you didn't hear him?"

It was more than possible. The proverbial herd of elephants could have tromped through the shop while I was unconscious, and I wouldn't have noticed. "The ladies' room is somewhat secluded in the outer corridor. I vaguely recall hearing people outside the building but nothing inside."

"So there could have been an intruder." This time the contemplative pause was brief. "How long were you indisposed?"

"I'm not sure."

"Long enough for an intruder to have emptied the cash registers?"

All of my previous blackouts had been brief, only a few seconds. I couldn't swear that today's had been equally short, and the detective was circling around the one fact I would prefer to keep private. "I don't really time my
indispositions
."