The Devil's Puzzle (5 page)

“So we leave the skeleton to Jesse and concentrate on Oliver and Eleanor,” Natalie said, a note of concern in her voice. “Do you really think you can ignore a dead man in your own backyard?”

“Absolutely,” I said, and I almost believed it.

CHAPTER 7

“D
o you want popcorn?” Jesse asked me.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Dumb question.” He laughed and turned to the kid behind the counter. “Two buttered popcorns, two Cokes.”

“And Twizzlers.”

“That’s a lot of food, even for movie night,” he said as we sat in our usual seats at Bryant’s Cinema, the local classic movie theater—actually, the only movie theater in town.

“It’s
Psycho
. Horror movies require a lot of snacking. Keeps me from screaming.”

“You do make a lot of noise.” He winked.

I tried not to smile. No sense in encouraging him.

Ed Bryant, the owner, was standing at the back of the theater, a look of exasperation on his face. “Sorry folks, I’m having a little trouble with the projector. It will be a few minutes before I can get the movie going.”

“Don’t worry about it, Ed,” someone in the front row called back.

“Thanks.” As he turned, Ed noticed Jesse. “Hey, Chief. Not on duty tonight?”

“Yeah,” Jesse said, “I’m watching her. A one-woman crime spree.”

“You’re Eleanor’s granddaughter,” Ed said to me. He had a friendly face, making him seem younger than a man in his seventies. “Nice meeting you.”

“You, too,” I said. “I really like your theater.”

“Thanks. We’ve been doing a lot of remodeling to it. I’m trying to keep the original spirit of the place, but just freshen it up a little.”

“You’re doing a terrific job.”

His face lit up. “You should see the plans I have for this place. I could really make it something if I had the money.”

Jesse coughed. “Ed, don’t you have a projector to fix?”

Ed nodded. “Yeah, right. Sorry.”

He ran out the door and presumably headed up to the projection room. I’d seen Ed at the library on the day of the big meeting, but we’d never actually met before. With just over five thousand residents, Archers Rest is a big enough town where you don’t know everyone but small enough where no one is really a stranger.

While we waited for the movie to start, Jesse and I munched on our popcorn and he caught me up on the activities of his six-year-old daughter, Allie.

“So when are you going to ask me?” Jesse took one of the Twizzlers and tapped me on the head with it.

“Ask you what?”

“About the investigation,” he said. “About the skeleton.”

“I’m not interested.”

He laughed so loud that another patron shushed him, even though we were staring at a blank screen.

“I’m serious,” I said, and dug another handful of popcorn out of the bag. “I’ve given it a lot of thought and I really want to concentrate on Eleanor and Oliver.”

“Maybe you would get into less trouble focusing on the skeleton than you will interfering in Eleanor’s life.”

“How many times have you told me to stay out of police work?” I asked. “And now you
want
me to get involved in an investigation? I’m getting mixed signals.”

“I’m just looking at the lesser of two evils. This guy has been dead for a long time. Whoever killed him probably is in the cemetery himself, so I don’t have to worry about you confronting a killer. If Eleanor thinks you’re pushing her toward something she doesn’t want, she’ll never forgive you.” He paused, seemed to think about what he wanted to say, and then turned to me. “Plus, you have a way of looking at things that can be very helpful sometimes.”

The last remark took me by surprise. “You’re complimenting me on my detective skills.”

“Don’t get carried away. I’m just saying you see things I don’t sometimes. And that can be useful.”

I chuckled. “I wish I were videotaping this. That way the next time you tell me to butt out, I would have evidence that you actually like working with me on your cases.”

Jesse shifted in his seat. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No. I’m glad you did. I’m not going to get involved in your investigation.” I could see the skepticism in his face. “But if you want to bounce ideas off me, maybe I’ll think of something you wouldn’t have. And maybe if you have ideas about Eleanor and Oliver . . .”

“Deal. Just know that you and Eleanor are a lot alike, and if you push her toward Oliver, she’ll go the opposite way just to be stubborn.”

“I’m not trying to push her anywhere. I just want to make sure she’s turning Oliver down for a good reason. I don’t want her to make the wrong choice because she’s scared or something.”

“She’s not scared. She’s just independent.” Jesse kissed me lightly.

“And she’s lucky to have you.”

“With my keen investigative skills, apparently so are you,” I teased. “So what have you found out?”

“Nothing, really. I checked the missing persons reports for the county going back to 1960. There’s no one matching his description that’s been reported missing in over fifty years.”

“What description? He’s all bones.”

“A forensic anthropologist from Albany came down to examine the remains. He was able to determine that it’s a white male, thirty to forty-five years old, roughly six feet, one broken leg, but it happened years before his death.”

“Can he figure out how long the body has been in the ground?”

“There are tests for that kind of thing, but it takes time and it’s expensive. Archers Rest doesn’t really have the budget. We may have no choice if I can’t figure out any other way to identify this guy, but I’m hoping there’s another way.”

“What about his clothes?”

“As you suspected, there was rayon in his pants and shirt. You quilters really know your fabric,” he said. “The jacket was tweed, not that there was much left of it. But there was a label from a shop on Savile Row, in London.”

“Expensive.”

“Very. Assuming the jacket was his.”

“Maybe the shop has records of its purchases. Particularly if the jacket was tailored for him.”

“Already checking.”

“Okay.” Since he had already thought of every one of my ideas, I was wondering if he really did need my help, but I kept going. “The doctors in town would have records of past injuries. Maybe someone set a broken leg?” I suggested.

“I’m checking on that but nothing so far. We’ve got three doctors in town that have been practicing for more than thirty years and what records they have don’t show anyone with those injuries.”

“No one?”

“No one who’s unaccounted for, I should say. But we’re still looking into it. I’ve got two officers checking on stored files from retired doctors, and if we have no luck there, we’ll spread out countywide, then statewide if we have to.”

“What about dental records?”

“Nothing that matches in Archers Rest. Though the coroner did say the man’s teeth were well cared for,” he said. “That’s the confusing part. His teeth were in great shape, but his leg wasn’t set properly, as if he hadn’t gotten good medical care. If he had the money to look after his teeth, why didn’t he have the money to get his leg set?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, only another question. “What about DNA? Can you identify him that way?”

“I’d need DNA to compare it to,” Jesse said. “I’d need a relative.”

“What about the blood spots you found?”

“No match in the national criminal database.”

“I’m sure people in town would volunteer to give samples of their DNA. All you need is to swab their cheek, right?”

“Yeah, but to do the whole town would take a lot of money and a lot of time. I’d rather start with asking around. Maybe someone remembers a man who passed through Archers Rest, or has a relative that’s been unaccounted for all these years. We . . .” He smiled. “Sorry,
I
just have to start asking everyone if they know anything.”

Just when I was about to ask if the coroner had been able to provide a cause of death, Ed announced that he’d fixed the projector. Despite reminding myself that I wasn’t going to get involved in this investigation, I was puzzled about how a well-dressed man that no one in town had reported missing had ended up in Eleanor’s garden. It was all I could think about until Janet Leigh stepped into the shower, and then I grabbed Jesse’s arm and got lost in the movie.

CHAPTER 8

“H
i, Nell.”

The next morning I sat at the front counter of the shop, paging through the latest issue of my favorite art quilt magazine and trying to stay awake when Glad Warren snapped me to attention.

“Just popping my head in to see how things are going.”

‘They’re going well, Mrs. Warren.”

“Glad. Call me Glad. Anyone who would give so much of herself to help this town is a friend, and my friends call me Glad.”

“Okay. Well, I’m working on some plans for the quilt show and hoping to get some other regulars at the shop involved.”

Glad took a step into the store. It may have been her first time. She had a fussy, won’t-break-a-nail quality about her. Correcting other people’s manners and checking for dust seemed more likely to be Glad Warren’s hobbies than anything as useful as quilting.

She sniffed at the general warmth of the place and then turned on a concerned—aka annoyed—expression when she looked at me. “This is a big responsibility, Nell. A well-designed quilt show can be a huge draw for us, or it could be a disaster if it’s just thrown together. I hope you’re taking it seriously.”

“I’ve got a terrific plan for the show,” I assured her. “I just want to go over it with the other members of the quilt group and then I’ll clear it with you.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “Is Eleanor helping you, dear?”

“She’ll contribute a quilt or two, I’m sure, but she’s leaving the show to me.”

“Well, I suppose she knows what she’s doing. Your grandmother sometimes can exhibit an inexplicable faith in people.”

“I don’t think she’s ever been wrong.”

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s good that you have such confidence in your grandmother’s judgment. Just let me know what you need before you get in over your head.”

“Will do.”

I watched her glance around the store before leaving. While I did sense that Glad approved of handmade things and the continuing of tradition, I also felt that she would never bother with the actual effort involved in making anything from scratch, and was wary of anyone who would. For Glad, the only duty of a prominent citizen was to form a committee and find some poor idiot to do all the work.

“Who’s that?” Kathryn Brigham, a regular customer of Someday Quilts, had been pulling bolts of bright neon pink fabrics.

“One of our town big shots. I somehow got myself put in charge of a quilt show this summer.”

“It sounds like you have some great ideas for it,” she said.

“It does sound that way,” I admitted.

Truth was, between the skeleton and helping Oliver, I hadn’t really thought much about it. Now, with the Fourth of July weekend less than two months away and Glad looking over my shoulder, I had to start thinking. And fast.

Kathryn had gone back to the bolts, choosing, rejecting, then re-choosing fabric after fabric until she’d accumulated a pile. She ran her hand along Alex Anderson’s newest collection, a colorful medley of polka dots and stripes. I could see she was debating, the way quilters do, whether she should indulge in them.

“Are these new?” she asked.

“Just came yesterday.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with them.”

“When has that ever stopped a quilter?”

She laughed. “I’ll take a yard each. I’m trying to get my daughter interested in quilting, and I think she would love these. I think it’s wonderful the way quilting has been passed down from one generation to the next.”

“It is. You could trace the entire history of the country just by looking at antique quilts,” I said. “I’ve always thought of it as a really subversive way that women have expressed themselves. Over the centuries we’ve used quilts to make political statements or religious statements, show off our wealth with expensive fabrics, show off our talents with amazing stitch work . . .” I stopped myself from rambling. It was a subject I could talk about all day. “I’m always so humbled when I think about all the amazing quilters there have been.”

“It’s a good thing we have shops like this one, to keep the tradition alive,” she said, looking around. “Maybe I should pick up a couple of reproduction prints while I’m here.”

“We’ve got a great selection,” I told her. “They’re getting so popular we can hardly keep them in the store.”

Kathryn grabbed a few bolts of Civil War reproductions, then went back for some 1970s psychedelics. Like so many of our regular customers, she’d come from quite a distance to check out the newest fabrics we had in stock and didn’t want to miss something special. Someday Quilts was the only quilt shop for about thirty miles. Quilt shops, just like any other specialty business, suffer from dips in the economy, competition from the Internet, and the changing interests of their customers.

Somehow, though, my grandmother’s shop was doing better than ever. She’d doubled the square footage over a year ago and because of it had been able to hold more classes and bring in more specialty fabrics. And now the shop was offering quilting services. Or, rather, Natalie and I were, as we’d become quite good at the longarm machine we’d convinced Eleanor to buy.

It was turning out to be the shop’s best year. As Jesse had said, she was an independent woman used to running her business—and her life—without interference. It was something to be proud of, and as her granddaughter, something to aspire to. But I didn’t think the shop was the reason—at least not the entire reason—why Eleanor was shying away from a marriage to Oliver.