Murder, Plain and Simple (4 page)

Three minutes later, the alarm clock on the dresser left by a previous tenant sounded. I opened one eye, took aim, and hurled another pillow. Silence. Three minutes after that, a third alarm clock rang. This one was inside the closet and set to a local oldies station. The volume was set to eardrum-bursting. I sat upright in bed.

Oliver was at my feet with his head buried under the comforter. I blinked. Why were all these alarms going off? Where was I? What day was it? Then, I remembered the shop’s reopening. Although Running Stitch closed at seven, I’d stayed at the shop until almost midnight cleaning up, counting the money in the cash register, updating the shop’s accounts, and looking for the shop’s deed, which I never found. In general, I was a night person and worked better in the evening. I sent the quilting circle ladies home around nine despite their protests. They needed to be with their families and had given me too much of their time already. When I finally fell into bed, it was after one in the morning. Suddenly, I remembered Danny Nicolson and the six thirty a.m. interview. I was late, very late.

After throwing on the first passable outfit I could find, I let Oliver into the backyard. If he needed to escape any birds, he could wriggle through the doggy door, his favorite feature of our new home, cut into the bottom of the kitchen door. Then I flew from the house. I didn’t even brush my hair. I hoped Danny didn’t want to take pictures of me. The rat’s nest on the top of my head would be bad for business. I jumped into my SUV and drove the five minutes to Running Stitch. When I pulled into the diagonal space in front of the store, Danny was tapping his foot on the sidewalk in front of the shop.

“You’re late,” he said by way of greeting.

“I’m so sorry. I overslept.”

Danny’s eyes dropped as if he had heard it all before. He probably had. “It’s already a quarter till. I have to leave at eight, so let’s get started.”

“Of course,” I said. With a shaky hand, I unlocked the front door to the shop. I willed myself to calm down. I’d overslept. It was no big deal. I flipped on the overhead lights. I paused in the doorway. “That’s strange,” I murmured. Aunt Eleanor’s double wedding ring quilt wasn’t hanging on the wall behind the register. Had we sold it? I felt a pang. It was the one quilt in the shop I hoped to keep for myself.

Danny cleared his throat. “Is it all right if I come in? I’m on a tight timetable.”

I stepped out of the way. “Sure.”

“The quilting circle looks like a good place to do the interview. How’s that?” Danny asked.

“Good idea,” I said, but my mind was still on the missing quilt. Maybe Martha put it somewhere for safekeeping.

He sat on one of the straight-backed chairs around the quilt frame. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I dropped my purse on the counter. “Before we start, I need to run back to the stockroom to check on something.”

He gave an exaggerated glance at his wristwatch. “Fine.” He stopped just short of rolling his eyes.

I’d feel better during the interview if I knew where my aunt’s quilt was. The only place it could be was the stockroom.

I opened the door to the small stockroom, pulled the string leading to the overhead light, and screamed.

Joseph Walker lay on the wood floor inches from my feet, and he wasn’t moving. He was dead. My first clue was his blank eyes staring at the ceiling. My second tip-off was the ugly gash across his throat.

Just above his head, my aunt’s quilt lay in tatters on the floor and spattered with blood. It was so mutilated that the pattern was unrecognizable. I wouldn’t even have known it was my aunt’s quilt but for the colors. The rotary cutters that the ladies teased me about lay in the middle of what was left of the destroyed quilt. The safety button was off and the blade was stained a brownish red.

I felt light-headed.

“What’s going on?” Danny demanded, too close to my ear, and I stumbled. I reached for the shelf closest to me to catch my balance. The shelf broke and dozens of quilt squares fell to the floor and on top of Joseph, soaking up some of the blood puddle on the floor.

“Holy smokes,” Danny whispered.

I came to my senses. “Call nine-one-one,” I ordered.

“I can’t. My cell phone is in my car. Do you have a phone here?”

“No, the phone company is coming Monday to set up a landline and the Internet.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. The display read
NO SIGNAL
.

Danny peered at my screen. “Oh, that carrier doesn’t work here. Only one or two do.”

I pushed him aside. “Maybe I can get a signal outside.”

I unlocked the door to the garden and rushed outside. Bending at the waist, I braced my hands on my knees and gulped air. I had never seen anything so gruesome in my life.
Police. Call police.

I held my phone in the air, waving it from side to side. “Come on! Come on!” Miraculously, a half of a bar appeared.

The operator picked up, and I told her my location and about my horrifying discovery.

“You found what?” she asked in disbelief as my cell dropped the call.

I tucked the useless device back into my jeans pocket and reentered the shop. Danny was just outside the stockroom, taking photographs of Joseph’s body with a tiny digital camera. “What are you doing?” I demanded.

He snapped two more photos before responding. “Working on a story.”

“This isn’t the story you came here to write.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he said with a glint in his eye. He held the camera up and snapped a picture of me.

“Don’t do that.” I grabbed for the camera, but he held it out of my reach. I was considering wrestling him for it when I heard sirens.

Within minutes my shop was overrun by police. It looked like they called in the entire sheriff’s department. A young officer no more than eighteen introduced himself as Deputy Anderson. He asked Danny and me to stand outside the shop.

We stood just left of the shop’s threshold when another sheriff’s department’s vehicle parked in the middle of the street.

“That’s Sheriff Mitchell. He’ll want to talk to you.” Anderson’s voice held a hint of awe.

When the sheriff stepped out of the vehicle, I winced. Just as I’d feared, it was the same officer I’d met the last time I visited my aunt, six months ago. I hoped he’d forgotten me because our meeting included the sheriff plucking me off the frozen sidewalk. Not one of my most graceful moments.

Sheriff Mitchell was a tall man, maybe even six-four. He wore a navy-colored department uniform like Deputy Anderson’s. However, while the younger man played dress-up, the sheriff carried himself as if he were ready for a publicity shoot. Short tufts of salt-and-pepper hair stuck out from under his sheriff’s department baseball cap. He gestured to Anderson to join him just out of Danny’s and my earshot. The pair looked at us often.

“Think they are talking about us?” Danny asked.

As far as I was concerned, that question didn’t deserve a response.

Anderson and the sheriff approached us. Mitchell’s eyes moved from me to Danny and back again. I was startled by how bright blue his eyes were. They reminded me of a clear day in Texas. “Did either of you touch anything?” The blue eyes narrowed.

“I stumbled into the shelf and knocked fabric on top of him. It was an accident.” Despite the humid air, I wrapped my arms around my body.

He turned his gaze on the reporter. “What about you, Danny?”

“No, nothing.”

I bit my lip. “What about the photos?”

Danny glared at me.

Mitchell’s eyes zeroed back on me, blinding me. His eyes weren’t blue, as I first thought, but a blue-green color like aquamarine.

“Photos? Photos of what?” the sheriff asked.

I blinked, breaking eye contact with the sheriff, and glanced at Danny, who looked like he wanted to strangle me. “Of Joseph. Danny took some.”

Mitchell held out his large hand. “Camera.”

“There’s freedom of the press. You can’t confiscate—”

“Camera. Now.” Mitchell’s tone didn’t leave room for argument.

Danny fished the small digital camera from his pants pocket and handed it to Mitchell. The sheriff removed the camera’s memory card and slipped it into the breast pocket of his uniform before returning the camera to Danny.

“I have other photographs on there I need!” Danny cried.

Mitchell shrugged. “Danny, Deputy Anderson will take down your statement.”

“I have an important meeting in Columbus in only a few hours.”

“The sooner you give your statement, the sooner you can leave,” Mitchell replied.

Danny glared at me before he followed Anderson to his patrol car. If looks could kill, Danny put me six feet under.

Across the street outside Miller’s Amish Bakery, Rachel and her husband stood with their arms wrapped around each other. Their eyes were as big as Rachel’s famous apple pies. I nodded at them. Even at a distance, their presence comforted me.

Mitchell focused on me, and I felt myself squirm. “Tell me everything from the beginning.”

So I did. I was just getting to the part where the police arrived when my pocket vibrated.
Bing! Bing! Bing!
my cell phone cried. Now it worked, of course. I removed it from my pocket and checked the display. A calendar reminder was in the middle of my screen. In capital letters, it read
DRESS FITTING
! I stared at it. Feeling the same amount of shock I felt when I discovered Joseph’s body.

“What is it?” Mitchell asked in a kinder voice than he’d previously used.

“I . . . I . . .” was the best I could do.

He took the phone from my hand. His action shook me out of my stupor. “Hey! You can’t take that.”

“Sure, I can. It might be related to the case.” His brow wrinkled. “Dress fitting? Are you going to be in a wedding or something?”

“Or something,” I muttered.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Trust me. This has nothing to do with Joseph.”

“Uh-huh.” His tone dripped with doubt. He stared at me, and for a second time, I felt myself fidget under his blue-green-eyed gaze. I gritted my teeth and stared him back in the eye. I wasn’t going to let some small-time sheriff intimidate me.

Mitchell reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and removed a white business card. “You think of anything else, you call me anytime.”

Without examining it, I stuffed it into my purse.

He seemed to recognize the defiance in my expression and smiled. “Against my better judgment, you’re free for now, even if you are a prime flight risk.”

“Flight risk?”

“You have no friends or family here. There’s nothing keeping you here.”

I straightened my spine. “I do have friends in Holmes County. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I will soon enough.”

“I’m not a flight risk,” I muttered.

“Prove it. Don’t leave town.”

I glared at him.

“And watch where you’re walking, too. I don’t want to have to pick you up off of the ground again.” With that, Mitchell went inside the shop and left me with my mouth hanging open.

Heat rushed to my face. Ugh. He
did
remember.

As soon as Mitchell disappeared into the house, Rachel ran across the street, dodging officers as she went. “Angie, what’s going on? When my husband told me there were police cars outside your shop, I couldn’t believe it.” She gave me a big hug. “Did someone break into Running Stitch?”

“Yes, but it’s more than that.” I pursed my lips. “It’s Joseph Walker. He’s dead.”

She gasped. “Dead?”

“I found him in the stockroom.”

“What was he doing there?”

“I have no idea,” I murmured. “It only gets worse, Rachel. Joseph Walker was murdered.”

“Murdered,” she whispered. “That can’t be possible.”

I glanced at the shop door. “I think the sheriff believes I killed him.”

“He couldn’t possibly think that,” she insisted.

I didn’t bother to argue with her.

Rachel wrapped her arm around me. “Do you need anything?”

“Do you make doughnuts in your bakery?”

She was taken aback by the question. I had to admit it wasn’t an obvious transition to anyone but me.

“Not usually, but we can,” Rachel said.

“Could you make one as big as my head?”

The EMTs wheeled the body bag out of the shop on a stretcher. The coroner followed close behind.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m changing my order. I think I need two head-sized doughnuts.”