Tree of Life and Death (9 page)

I might have continued with my cross-examination, except I caught a glimpse of Fred running a finger through the dusting of sugar on a cookie plate. "I'd better go have this order called in so we don't all collapse from hunger before the food arrives. We wouldn't want to waste all those excellent pot stickers."

*   *   *

I added an assortment of lunch orders to my list, for Sunny and Stefan, who were still in Gil's office, and Matt, whom I didn't want to interrupt while he was talking to Richie Faria. I handed the paper, along with my credit card, to Fred, who went out into the hall to call in the order. He could still make sure no one left from out there, and he had Richie Faria as backup inside the boardroom, keeping an eye on all of us witnesses.

I was a little surprised that Faria actually let Meg McLaughlin leave for yet another trip to the ladies' room. I would have expected him to insist, on principle, that she needed an escort for the brief walk down the hall. Apparently even he could see there really wasn't anywhere for her to go, not with Fred out in the hall, a clear view of the door to the restrooms, and no way for anyone to escape from the windowless, second-floor space.

Faria cut off his conversation with Matt so he could stand at the entrance with the stoic, silent demeanor of a Buckingham Palace guard. I expected Matt to act like a tourist trying to get one of the Queen's Guard to laugh or otherwise react, but for once he didn't try to get a rise out of anyone. He accepted his dismissal and wandered over to the empty seat next to Carl Quincy at the first sewing machine table.

There wasn't much I could do until the food arrived, so I went over to see if Matt had learned anything from Faria. Matt was a reporter, after all, even if he insisted he was only interested in stories about the arts. Surely he was as curious as I was about what could possibly have led to Alan Miller's untimely death.

By the time I reached the front table, Matt was already surrounded by quilters, most of them a good fifteen to twenty years older than he was. A few of them took selfies with him while he bantered and kept everyone's mind off the uniformed officer at the door and the reason for his presence.

Matt definitely had a way with women. At the quilt show three months ago, I'd seen him graciously rebuff the matchmaking efforts of the quilters who'd wanted to introduce him to their daughters or granddaughters, and he'd pretended not to notice the other quilters who were infatuated with him.

I wasn't entirely sure what they all saw in him. It wasn't just that he was a novelty, as a male vastly outnumbered by women in the room. Carl Quincy hadn't attracted any groupies. Matt was more gregarious than Carl, although given the number of pictures being taken, the attraction seemed to be primarily based on Matt's appearance, not on his conversational skills.

I hadn't imagined it earlier today; Matt's looks really had improved during his absence. His hair was different than the last time I saw him. It had been cut and styled within the last two or three weeks, instead of being several months overdue for a trim. Of course, some things didn't change. Matt still favored the same brand of excessively-pocketed cargo pants and odd-colored sport shirts.

Matt politely encouraged the last selfie-taker to move along, and then he turned to me. I'd never really believed that anyone could express hunger for another person just through his eyes and facial expression, but he was definitely looking at me as if we were lovers reunited after a long separation. Of course, he probably used the same expression on all of his groupies. He'd probably learned to fake it while posing for the camera.

I'd never been a groupie, and I had no intention of starting now. I returned his gaze coolly.

It didn't seem to bother him. In fact, his smile widened even more. "Life is always an adventure when we're together."

I couldn't help the way my spirits lifted. He really was charming, and I was as susceptible to his blarney as all the other women in the room. And then I remembered the three months when he hadn't called.

"People die when we're together."

"I guess I've got my work cut out for me if you associate me with death." Matt gestured for me to sit next to him. "I like a challenge though."

I dropped into the empty chair while I considered how to respond to his flirting. I wasn't in the market for anything more than a friendship with him or anyone else these days anyway. Friends were good. Everyone needed them, and they'd been shown to reduce stress. Romantic relationships, on the other hand, generally caused a huge spike in stress levels, at least in their early stages. Oh, sure, they had their health benefits too, with all those endorphins and serotonin being released, but I needed to get my medical condition under better control before I even considered dating again. Otherwise, I'd be passing out left and right, which, in addition to scaring off potential lovers, also tended to cause bruises, concussions, and broken bones. No man, least of all an unreliable one, was worth that kind of pain.

I deliberately pretended to misunderstand Matt's last comment. "Would it be a big enough challenge if I asked you to help me make sure the police are on the right track today? I saw you talking to Richie Faria. Did he tell you anything about what's going on downstairs?"

Matt hesitated for the briefest moment before accepting the change of subject. "He wouldn't say anything. Apparently it's against the rules for responding officers to say anything substantive to reporters. All he can do is refer me to the lead detective."

"Seriously? And you let him get away with that?"

"Of course not. I didn't need him to say anything. His body language told me everything he knew. All I had to do was ask leading questions and watch his response. As best I can tell, their theory is that it's a case of a known troublemaker hanging around with the wrong people and reaping the consequences."

"That seems awfully simplistic. A one-size-fits-all theory of crime," I said. "Of course, Dee and Emma think Alan was killed because of the quilt, and that's just another flavor of one-size-fits-all solutions. Everything is about quilts for them."

"It's as good a theory as the official one," he said. "But you're right. I think it's more complicated than either one. What's your theory? I saw you talking to everyone, and it looked like you were asking more than, 'What do you want for lunch?'"

I glanced at Richie Faria, standing at attention beside the door. "Was I that obvious?"

"No," Matt said. "Faria wasn't paying you any attention. He thinks you're nothing but a clueless meddler, not worth watching. Just shows you what a fool he is. And I wasn't about to tell him what you were up to. You owe me for not blowing your cover, so tell me what you found out."

"Nothing, I'm afraid. No one saw anything, no one actually knew Alan except by reputation, and they're all in a bit of shock."

"I think someone in this room is in more shock than everyone else."

My voice rose in surprise. "You think one of the quilters did it?"

Carl Quincy stiffened at the far end of the table.

"It's just a theory," Matt said. "But think about where Alan was killed. I think he knew his killer and wasn't afraid to be alone with him—or her—in a secluded area where he'd essentially be trapped within a confined space."

"It wouldn't be the first time that someone underestimated a quilter."

"Exactly. He must have thought the killer was harmless. From what I've heard, Alan was a streetwise kid, so he'd have stayed out in the open if he thought the other person might want to attack him. It's not easy to stab a person if the victim has some warning and an open path to run away."

"What would you know about a stabbing?" I hadn't looked at the corpse closely enough to see any details other than Alan's unseeing eyes and a vague impression of blood. "You keep telling me you're nothing but a lowly arts reporter."

"People always assume reporters are interested in crimes, so I hear all sorts of stuff. But I really do prefer reporting on art." Matt looked down at the bed of the sewing machine for a moment. "Forget about my history. Let's just say I've seen a lot of things, most of them completely unrelated to being a reporter. Trust me when I say I know what a stabbing victim looks like."

"Okay, but why would a quilter stab Alan Miller?"

"That's your job to figure out," Matt said. "I was hoping you could fill in the motivation from what you'd learned."

"Sorry. All I got was lunch orders and a whole lot of 'I know nothing.'"

"Not your fault," Matt said. "No one does her best work on an empty stomach. We can both try again after we've eaten. Until then, I'm going to make some ornaments. What about you?"

"Nothing that involves a sewing machine. They can be as deadly as a knife."

"Never thought you'd be such a chicken." Matt grabbed a red square and a white square, but instead of stitching a seam close to one edge of the paired-up pieces as I'd seen Carl do, he stitched a diagonal line across the squares. "It's easy. See?"

I pointed at the white board. "Your work doesn't look anything like the diagrams or like any of the other pieces I've seen around the room."

"I prefer to make my own designs." He took another pair of squares and made another random, but admittedly straight, diagonal stitching line, and then repeated the process with two more pairs of squares. "Be right back."

He dashed off to an ironing board, did some quick pressing, then jogged over to a cutting table, did something I couldn't see, and then came back with his stitched pieces trimmed down to squares. They still didn't look anything like the diagram on the white board. Instead of being precisely split down the middle into two identical but different-colored triangles, his squares were divided along a diagonal line into two unequal sections, sometimes with more red and sometimes with more white.

Matt laid his pieced squares on the table, alternating them with some plain squares of fabric. He placed a red square in the middle and white ones in the four corners. I could see a vague resemblance to the diagram on the wall, but instead of forming a star with four identical triangular points, his star had four points that were all a slightly different size and shape from each other.

A few quilters wandered over, and one of them said something about Gwen Marston and
Liberated Quiltmaking
. I'd heard of the iconic book, but I hadn't personally viewed any quilts made in that spontaneous and intentionally imperfect style.

When Matt finished his little star, he handed it to me. It really did look quite nice, pulsing with more energy than the precisely pieced blocks. I doubted Meg and Jayne would approve, although when I turned it over, the seams did appear to be perfectly even at a scant quarter inch.

When I put the block down on the table, Matt searched his pockets until he found a pen with indelible ink. He signed a white corner square with
Matteo
, and handed it to one of the women who'd been admiring his handiwork. Admiring something about him anyway.

He asked her, "Would you get this ironed, and pass it along to whoever's layering the blocks for finishing?"

The woman took the block and carried it over to a nearby ironing board as carefully as if it were made of spun glass.

Matt didn't need my help with his quiltmaking or his groupies, so I stood to go see if I could help Gil, who had returned from her office and was growing increasingly frustrated with Richie Faria. He was apparently enforcing his
can't talk to mere civilians while I'm guarding the room
rule even when it came to dealing with the one person who could best help him keep the situation under control.

Before I could go join Gil, Emma called my name and waved me over to where she and Dee were working. Emma kept her voice low and confidential, making her hard to hear over the sewing machine motors. "It's great to see you and Matt working together again. He couldn't stop talking about you after the quilt show, right up to the minute he left town, and then he asked about you as soon as he got back yesterday."

So Matt hadn't just been gone a few days, he'd been gone the entire time I'd been wondering when he was going to call. "That's a long time to be away. I can't imagine the
Cove Chronicles
sending him off on assignment for three months. Where was he?"

Beside Emma, Dee suddenly felt the need to study the pieces of fabric she was about to stitch together, and Emma's eyes developed a frozen, deer-in-the-headlights look.

Finally, Emma said, "I forgot. We're not supposed to talk about it. He made us promise. I think he finds it embarrassing."

"Ridiculous man," Dee said, patting my hand apologetically. "But we did promise. You'll have to ask him yourself."

"I will." No matter what Dee and Emma seemed to think, I was convinced Matt's flirting was nothing more than a part of his job. Once he realized he didn't need to play the game and just told me what he wanted, we might actually be able to be friends. "In the meantime though, there really isn't anything for us to work on together. Not while we're cooped up here, with no idea of whether the police have already caught the culprit."

"They couldn't possibly have the killer in custody," Dee said. "It's got to be one of the quilters, and we're all accounted for. I don't like thinking of my guild as harboring a killer, but who else could it be?"

"Poor Sunny," Emma said. "She's going to be the prime suspect, isn't she?"

"I'm afraid so, just because she found the body."

"That's not the only reason for them to suspect her." Dee handed Emma some pieces to carry over to a nearby ironing board. "Sunny knew Alan and wasn't on the best of terms with him."

I couldn't imagine what could have brought the two of them—a physical therapist/entrepreneur and an unemployed millennial—together and then set them at odds. "How do they even know each other?"

"Sunny interviewed Alan for a job at the hospital's physical therapy department," Dee said, "and she declined to hire him. She even left the job unfilled rather than offer it to him. He wasn't happy about it."