The Lover's Knot (26 page)

CHAPTER 48

The next morning Eleanor was up early and hobbling around in the kitchen, so I figured it was safe to search her room. I tried to get Barney to be my watchdog and sit at the door to the I tried to get Barney to be my watchdog and sit at the door to the living room, but he interpreted my hand gestures as an invitation to play, so I wasted five valuable minutes roughhousing with him in the hallway.

When he was finally tired he plopped down in the doorway. I just looked at him for a moment. Poor old thing. It must be tough to have the enthusiasm of a puppy in the body of a deaf old dog. But he seemed happy enough, savoring the joys of a few pats on the head or a few minutes of play. Maybe Barney knew what I was only beginning to see. That you have to make a little happiness for yourself wherever you can, rather than dream about what may be down the road.

As I stood in the doorway changing my life philosophy once again, I heard noises from the kitchen. I could either stand there or do what I came to do. I moved slowly into the room.

Where to start? When Marc broke into the house the night Eleanor was in the hospital—if Marc broke into the house—then none of the bedroom furniture or television would have been here. There weren’t a lot of hiding places. The room, like all of Eleanor’s rooms, was sparsely furnished. I looked behind the curtains. Nothing. Under the rug. Nothing. I stuck my hand up the fireplace. Eleanor never used the fireplace. “Waste of good wood and good central heating,” she said at least a hundred times. I felt around. There was . . . something. A piece of tape. I inched my fingers up a little higher and felt a bulge against the wall of the fireplace. It was paper, taped to the wall. But I could only touch the corner of it.

“Nell,” Eleanor was calling from the other room. I ignored her. “Nell, are you awake?”

“I’ll be right there,” I yelled back. “Are you okay?”

“Coffee’s ready. And it’s hot.”

I strained my arm as high as it could go and felt a slight cramping in my shoulder. I had promised myself a dozen times that I was going to spend twenty minutes every day stretching. If I had known it would have such a practical use I would have done it. Oh, well, tomorrow, I thought in another likely to be broken promise.

I reached in and pulled. As I did I fell against the fireplace. “Damn it.”

“What did you say?” I heard Eleanor. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” I glanced at the envelope in my hand. My fingers were trembling slightly as I opened it. It was filled with cash.

“Nell, what are you up to?”

“I’m coming,” I said as I left the living room, nearly tripping over Barney as I did. My coat was hanging in the hall closet, so I stuffed the envelope into a pocket and headed into the kitchen for coffee.

“Well, you were slow to start your day this morning.” Eleanor greeted me with a suspicious eye.

“I know. I’m sorry,” I said as I gulped down the piping hot coffee and nearly burned off my tongue. “I have to head into town and check on the shop.”

“That’s a good idea. And when you go to the police station ask Jesse to see the quilt Marc had in his hands. See how damaged it is.”

“What makes you think I’m going . . . ,” I started, but what was the point of protesting? The woman had spies everywhere. “I’ll ask to see the quilt.”

“I told you I was going to search the living room,” Jesse said as I handed him the envelope.

“I was cleaning.”

“The fireplace?”

“Yes.” I stubbornly stuck to a story that he clearly he didn’t believe. “Besides, you said that I could bring you anything I found, any clues, any hunches, just as any concerned citizen would.”

Jesse grunted but put on a pair of gloves, opened the envelope and began counting the cash.

“How much is it?” I sat impatiently. I knew he would probably prefer I left the office, but I was going nowhere, and since, technically, the cash was not part of any crime, at least not yet, he didn’t throw me out.

“Just over six thousand,” he said. He spread the dollars over his desk.

“So Marc was hiding the cash at my grandmother’s.”

“Maybe. Half the cash, anyway.”

“Well, the other half was for the doctor.”

“But he never gave it to the doctor.” Jesse looked at me. “So that money is somewhere.”

“You said he might have gambled it away. So maybe he didn’t have time to get back to Eleanor’s to get the rest.”

“How do you know it’s not Eleanor’s?” he asked.

“We just put her books on computer. I saw. She’s got every penny accounted for. Besides, my grandmother doesn’t like leaving twenty bucks in the register overnight. There’s no way she’d store this kind of cash in her house.”

“Okay. If someone knew Marc had this money, then they may have come to the shop looking for it. When Marc didn’t have it, he was killed so the killer could look for it.”

“If Marc told the doctor he had money, he could have told other people. He could have flashed it around.” I could hear the excitement in my voice as it felt like we were getting close to the answer. “Have you gone through his phone records, seen who his friends are?”

Jesse leaned back in his chair and hesitated. Then he leaned forward. “I’m only telling you this to stop you from running around town interviewing suspects. There’s nothing unusual.” He reached into a file and took out a list of numbers from Marc’s cell phone.

“He called this 212 number a lot, including Friday,” I said. “He told me he never went into the city anymore, so who would he call there?”

“Maggie’s daughter. That’s her cell number,” Jesse said flatly.

“Why would he call Maggie’s daughter? You don’t think that’s odd?”

He shook his head. “Not really. She’s his cousin. He’s Maggie’s nephew.” Jesse put the list back in its folder and looked at me for a long time. “Assuming this is Marc’s money and assuming that someone knew about it and was after it, that’s good news for you. It pretty much leaves your fiancé off the hook.”

With all the fun I was having being a junior detective, I’d forgotten the whole reason I wanted to find Marc’s killer. I nodded but didn’t say anything.

Jesse leaned over and put the blue box of invitations on his desk. “So you can mail these out. You left them here.”

I touched the box lightly. “I will,” I said. “I just have somewhere I have to go first.”

“Where?” Jesse asked as I walked out of his office empty-handed.

CHAPTER 49

Maggie answered the door before I had a chance to ring. “There’s coffee in the kitchen,” she said.

Maggie’s home was large and traditional, with classic quilts hanging on many of the walls from the living room to the kitchen. Some were muted, others bright and playful. It was the sort of contradiction that mirrored Maggie’s personality exactly.

“My blue period,” Maggie said as we noticed two blue and white quilts hanging side by side above the kitchen table. “So you want to find out why Marc called my Sheila.”

“Yes.” I always felt intimidated in her presence. “I was also curious why you didn’t mention Marc was your nephew.”

“He was my husband’s nephew actually,” she said gruffly. “I don’t like to take credit for how that boy turned out.”

“Still,” I said, “you made it clear you didn’t think much of him and you never said . . .”

“Didn’t see much of him.” She poured more coffee into my almost full cup. “He ingratiated himself to my daughter, though, and she has more tolerance for his kind.”

“What kind?”

“Well, she has that art gallery of hers in New York . . .”

“So, she has a tolerance for artists.” I was confused and a little annoyed, and I knew both were showing.

Maggie leaned in. “I have no issue with artists, young lady. Sometimes creative people live a little outside the lines, but it’s necessary. It’s good. You have to take a step back from accepted society if you are going to comment on it.” Beneath the print dress and tight bun was a bohemian. Who knew?

“So what kind was Marc?”

“A petty con. A drifter. He had no direction. He was always looking for the easy way. If he spent his days building furniture, like he always said he wanted to, I would have respected that boy. I would have encouraged him. But he spent his days
talking
about building furniture. And there is a difference.”

I nodded. You can’t argue with that. Not that I would have argued with Maggie. I doubt anyone would have.

“I’d love to see her gallery sometime,” I said. “I think I told you, I’ve always wanted to be an artist, or at least be around art. Maybe your daughter can give me some guidance.”

Maggie got up from the table and rummaged around in a drawer. She handed me a card. “This is her business,” she said, and then she smiled at me. “I’m proud of you for moving forward like this. It’s important to go after your dreams.”

The gallery was a long, narrow space on Manhattan’s west side. It had only twenty or so objects in it, but everything looked ridiculously expensive. A woman who could have been a supermodel in a previous life walked over to me and glanced up and down. Though her facial expression never changed from an insincere smile, it was clear what she was thinking—I did not belong in such a fine place.

“Sheila?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m a friend of your mom’s. A friend of Marc’s.”

Suddenly the look of bored superiority melted away and an actual smile took its place. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. How are you?”

“Can we talk somewhere?” I said as I nodded toward the single customer looking at a painting near the front.

“Are you looking into what happened to Marc?”

“Yes,” I said, “in an unofficial kind of way.” She nodded, as if she suddenly figured something out. Then she looked me over. It took me a moment, but I realized what she was thinking. “I wasn’t a girlfriend,” I explained. “More of a friend.” I was digging a hole for myself, so I stopped talking and let her take the lead.

Sheila motioned me toward the cash register and away from the customer at the front. “Marc called me a few times, including the day he died,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when Mom called. She was so upset.”

“She was upset?” I repeated. “I got the impression she didn’t like Marc.”

“She didn’t. She liked him as a kid, he was really fun and creative, but he . . . I don’t know, he didn’t live up to expectations, I guess.” She stared off for a moment. “Still, she was crying when she called. And my mother doesn’t cry often.”

“I can imagine.”

“Why did Marc call you?”

Sheila shook her head. “He said he was going to make boxes. Carved boxes. And he wanted to know if I would sell them in my shop.”

“Would you have?” I asked. Looking around, the gallery had a fairly eclectic mix of objects. It was more of a fine craft than traditional art gallery. There were ceramic bowls and blown glass pieces as well as paintings, sculptures and textiles.

“Sure,” she said. “Marc was actually very talented. Not disciplined, but talented. He said he had a little money and he was going to use it to start his furniture business. But he was going to start small—with the boxes. If that went well, he’d make bigger pieces. He was quite excited about it.”

“But you must have thought that was just talk,” I said.

“I suppose I should have, given Marc’s track record.” Sheila smiled. “But he said he had been inspired by someone to turn over a new leaf, and I believed him. He’d even picked out a display area for the boxes.” She pointed to the center of the room. “I’d asked him to make me five, and we would see what happened.”

The display case was filled with glass vases that had the texture of sand, as if they were unearthed from some archeological site. But a tag on the table explained that the pieces had been made by an artist in New Jersey. I could picture Marc’s boxes sitting there instead, even though I really had no idea what they would have looked like. Still, it was nice to think of Marc as happy, excited, focused—the man I knew—instead of the person I’d been hearing about for days. And strange to think I might have been the inspiration.

The customer at the front of the shop waved toward Sheila. “Excuse me,” Sheila said. “I hope you find what happened to Marc. He really was a wonderful guy in so many ways.”

I took one more look around the little shop. It was pretty. A place for up-and-coming artists to show their work. But it was something at the back of the shop that caught my eye. The quilts were small, but even from a distance they looked quite beautiful and remarkably familiar.

I should have left, but I walked to the back wall of the gallery. Three two-foot square quilts hung on the wall, each with tiny appliquéd flowers, machine embroidered details, and intricate quilting.

“They’re Nancy’s,” I accidentally said out loud. “They have to be.”

CHAPTER 50

I knew it would probably get me into trouble, but I had to call Jesse anyway and tell him what I’d learned at the gallery. I dialed his number as soon as the train back to Archers Rest had pulled out of Grand Central. It’s generally frowned on to make calls on the train, since tired commuters aren’t that interested in listening to the details of someone else’s day, but I didn’t care.

Only it wasn’t working out as I had planned. Jesse wasn’t at the police station. I had to call Bernie to get Jesse’s mother’s number, who gave me Jesse’s. I could hear his daughter playing in the background, and I immediately felt guilty for interrupting their time together.

“How did you get my number?” he asked me as soon as I identified myself.

“What difference does it make?” I said. “I got it. I butted in. I snooped. Yell at me later.”

As my voice got more exasperated, I could hear his voice relax. “What did you do?” he asked.

I told him about my visit to Maggie and to her daughter’s gallery. Jesse didn’t seem too surprised by the idea that Marc was trying to sell carved boxes to an expensive gallery. “Except he didn’t actually make the boxes,” he pointed out. “He just talked about making them.”

“But he would have needed money to do that. Maybe that’s why he only offered the doctor five thousand dollars.”

“You don’t need ten thousand dollars to make boxes,” Jesse countered. I could hear Allie calling for him. “Look, Nell, I don’t know how many ways I can say this. You need to stay out of this. I can’t keep you from talking to Maggie or her daughter, any more than I can keep anyone in town from gossiping about this, but . . .” He stopped. “I’ll be in the office tomorrow. You should come by.”