Murders on Elderberry Road: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery Page 15

  They raised their hands in unison. “Right!” And so resolved, the Queen Bees departed for their own hives, pretending for the sake of one another that safety and peace were just around the corner.

  CHAPTER 21

  Crossroads

  When Po got home a short while later, she sat at her kitchen table and listened to a litany of phone messages — one from her daughter, telling Po that she and her husband and baby Jane were coming for Thanksgiving. She smiled. A joyful note in the middle of all this turmoil. Another message was from Peter, the thirteen-year-old boy who lived down the street. He didn’t have school tomorrow so he’d be over to mow the lawn, he told her, “like for probably the last time before winter.” Po smiled at the deep man-tone that had crept into little Peter’s voice when she wasn’t looking. The last one was a message from her editor saying the first few chapters were fine. An unexpected pang of disappointment passed through her. She stared at the answering machine, wondering what she had expected to hear. Had she thought there might be a voice-mail message announcing, “Your murderer is Colonel Mustard. He did it in the parlor with a candlestick?” Or P.J. calling with the news that they caught the guy at last — a stranger passing through town. Everyone was safe now.

  Po looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Just eight o’clock. Still early. She glanced at the box of Sleepy Time Tea that Rita Schuette had given her. She had a feeling that sleep would drag its feet tonight and an extra strong cup of Rita’s tea might be a good thing.

  Hoover was curled up in the corner of the kitchen on his flannel bed, content, safe. Po walked to the den, then back into the kitchen again. She wanted to grasp something tightly in her hands. And she felt so close to doing it. But when she reached for it, it slipped away.

  She opened the refrigerator and a thin yellow light fell out across the floor.

  Dinner. She hadn’t eaten any. Maybe that was the cause of this restless itch. This nagging in the pit of her stomach.

  Behind the milk and orange juice on the top shelf of the refrigerator, Po found a large container of home-made chicken soup that she had taken out to thaw a day or so ago, then completely forgotten about. She felt the sides of the Tupper-ware container. Almost thawed. Perfect. Chicken soup, the perfect antidote for this uncomfortable gnawing inside her. “Chicken Soup for the Restless Soul.”

  She looked at the size of the container and frowned, wondering what she was thinking about when she’d stored it in a container holding enough for the whole neighborhood. This was soup to be shared. And she’d like some company tonight, she realized suddenly.

  Po carried the soup to the sink and began to remove the lid, and then the perfect solution came to her. Susan! She hadn’t been eating, and Po’s chicken soup had never failed to coax the ill to eat. She’d pack up the soup and several packages of Rita’s tea, and maybe a pan of moist cornbread that she had picked up earlier in the day at Marla’s. She owed Susan a favor, and this might be just the thing to hurry her on her way to health.

  In minutes, Po had packed everything in a large wicker basket, adding a batch of brownies she had frozen for just such an occasion, and she was ready to go. The address Selma gave her was not far at all, just on the other side of the river. Ten minutes on quiet streets.

  Po pulled up to the small frame house in the modest neighborhood and smiled. It was exactly what she’d expect Susan’s house to look like. Though the yards and houses on the block were small — mostly one-story bungalows — Susan’s had that special artistic touch, a rose amidst wild flowers. Deep green shutters set off the small, white house. A shiny brass lamplight at the door was on, spilling light over a small front porch. An old Chinese Maple tree filled the front yard, and the small, neat sidewalk was bordered with low, groomed bushes. When she walked up the porch steps, Po noticed the porch swing and rocker, piled with quilted pillows.

  She knocked on the door softly.

  Susan answered the door in her robe. Her usually neat hair was slightly mussed. “Po,” she said, surprised.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call first, Susan, but Selma mentioned you were sick, and I had a sudden need to get out of my house. So here I am. I may not be Jewish, but I make a mean chicken soup.” Po lifted the basket.

  “How sweet of you.” Susan hesitated for a moment, then held the door open so Po could pass. “Forgive my manners. Please come in, Po.”

  Po stepped into a small, comfortable living room. “I don’t want to intrude,” she said. But in truth, she wanted just that. She liked Susan Miller, but she knew so little about her, and she suspected that deep down, there was a hidden cache of riches there that she hadn’t begun to tap. Maybe no one had.

  “My mother’s asleep in the back, but it’s all right. Nothing wakes her.”

  Po looked around the neat, comfortable room, but almost immediately her eyes were drawn to a brilliant splash of color on the far wall. “Oh, my,” Po said aloud.

  She set the basket of food on the counter separating the living room and kitchen, and walked over to the hanging. It was a quilt made of cotton, silk and brocade fabrics. They were cut and stitched in hundreds of irregular shapes and pieced together to form an image of woods and fields. A house or cabin in the center was heavy with thousands of seed beads in the same array of brilliant colors. The collage was beautiful and arresting, lifelike and abstract, all at the same time. Po couldn’t take her eyes off it. “Susan, this is amazing. It’s so … happy.”

  Susan stood back in the entry to the kitchen. She ran her fingers through her hair, coaxing order to it. Her cheeks flushed at Po’s words. “Yes,” Susan said softly. “It is happy.”

  Po squinted her eyes, moved close to the hanging, then stood a few steps back, unable to turn her attention away from the art on the wall. She saw comfort and harmony in it, but there was also something reckless — a reckless joy, she decided, that was it.

  “I see where the beads idea for Selma’s anniversary quilt came from,” Po said. She turned toward Susan. “I am in awe. This should be in a gallery.”

  “This one is just for me. But I’ve others.” Her face brightened. “In fact, I’m making a small one right now for Maggie. It’s for her fat lady collection. It’s a sweet round lady holding a black lab. I thought she could put it in the clinic.” She ushered Po into a small bedroom off the living room and lifted the square from a table near the bed. It was the size of a small tabletop and had a whole different feeling from the one in the living room, but it was equally wonderful, Po thought, and she knew Maggie would love it.

  Susan had used all cotton fabric for Maggie’s piece, but in different thicknesses and textures, some smooth and almost silky, some pebbled and grainy. The abstract lady was sitting on a park bench, her wide bosom and ample lap filled with a blue-black pup whose bright red tongue licked at her face. “I took some pictures for this one, then finally found just the right one and made a drawing from it. Then I cut different fabrics to fill in the woman’s features and the background. Do you think she’ll like it?”

  “No. She’ll be crazy about it. What talent you have, Susan Miller, and it’s hidden under a bushel basket. But I think that’s about to end.”

  “I think we need some tea,” she said, brushing off Po’s attention.

  “I think that’s a grand idea.” Po followed her into the other room, settling down on a tall stool at the counter. Susan busied herself at the stove, turning up the flame beneath the teakettle.

  “How did you do the large quilt hanging?”

  Susan sat opposite the counter and looked at the quilt. “I took a lot of pictures for that one, too. I used them as guides, to plan and structure the piece,” she said. “Then I let my heart do the rest, I guess.”

  Po nodded. She had had her own share of projects of the heart — her books, special quilts she made for her children. They talked for awhile about art and quilts, and Po watched the color creep back into Susan’s cheeks. “I think you’re on the mend,” she said.

  Susan nodded. �
�I’m sure I am. Your visit has been wonderful medicine.”

  Po wanted to ask Susan a dozen questions — about their unfinished conversation in the shop, about the veil that she could feel dropping over Susan right now, the one that told Po they’d talked enough. Don’t get any closer, it said.

  “Susan, it’s that time,” Po stood. “I’m going to leave you to a bowl of soup and a good night’s sleep. And I think I’ll help myself to the same.”

  Susan nodded. She was fading a little, she admitted, and she followed Po to the small entryway. Po was about to open the door when a collection of photographs on the wall just inside the door caught her eye. She stopped and looked closer at the simply framed black and white photos. “Are these yours, Susan?”

  Susan looked over at the wall and nodded. “Another passion of mine. Now you know everything there is to know about me, Po.”

  Po didn’t answer. She moved closer and looked at each one, wanting to know the Susan of the photographs. These were not snapshots, but wonderfully composed photographs. There was a long, winding country road. A rural crossroads with a field of cows looking curiously at the road signs. A still pond filled with lily pads and surrounded by waving grasses and cattails. The center photo was larger than the others, and Po saw immediately that it was the inspiration for the quilt. The photo was taken at sundown, Po suspected, and amazingly captured the myriad of colors in the falling night sky, but through shades of grays and blacks and whites. It was a country scene like the others, a rustic house and a narrow path leading to a thick, pine woods. Further in the distance was a long gravel drive with a rambling barn, a truck filled with hay, and a horse standing stock-still, looking off in the distance. The composition was perfect. “Lovely,” Po murmured. “Someday, Susan, I’m going to find me a spot like that.” She gave her a quick hug, and hurried out the door.

  Po drank her tea, but sleep came in starts and stops. Behind closed lids, she replayed her visit with Susan. There was something about the evening that tugged at her uncomfortably, pushed sleep back, far across the night. She wanted to get up out of bed and go back to her house and start the visit over, to see things she knew she was missing now in recollection.

  The quilts were startling. The photographs, too.

  But the most disconcerting, sleep-robbing thing of all was that there was something about Susan’s house that made Po think she had been there before, seen it before. There was something about it that was disturbingly familiar. And it stood just beyond the reaches of her memory in a spot she couldn’t quite see.

  CHAPTER 22

  Spinning Tops

  Wednesday morning Po slept in, a luxury she didn’t often afford herself but a necessity after a sleepless night. Finally, some time after eight o’clock, she pulled herself from beneath the covers and groped her way to the shower. Another hour or two would have suited her just fine, but not today. Today she needed to clear her head.

  After feeding Hoover and opening the garage door so Peter could get the lawnmower out, Po called Kate. If Peter could cut the grass because he didn’t have school, maybe Kate was free, too.

  “Parent-teacher conferences,” Kate announced. “And the college is on mid-term break. God’s in the heavens, all’s right in the world.”

  “Well, almost,” Po laughed. “I’m starving. Are you up for a plate of eggs at Marla’s?”

  “Have I ever said no to food?”

  In twenty minutes, Po was seated at the front table in the middle of the bay window, her favorite spot on a sunny day. While sunlight beat down on the table, she could sit back and see the whole block: Max’s empty office across the street; the parade of college kids biking and jogging and enjoying a week of freedom; shoppers moving in and out of the wine and cheese store, the bookstore. She saw Daisy standing in front of her store, staring at the window box. If she stared much harder, Po thought, it just might come tumbling down. And wouldn’t that be good for everyone.

  At the far corner she could just make out the corner of the quilt shop. She wondered if Susan was at work today. She awoke with the certain feeling that Susan had wanted to tell her something, something difficult, perhaps. Maybe something she couldn’t put into words. Susan had kept their conversation last night on a safe plane, talking about art and tea and chicken soup. But beneath it all, Po still couldn’t shake the discomforting feeling that either Susan or her house had a message for her. And it was having a hard time being delivered.

  Outside the bay window, gusty winds blew the few remaining leaves across the street and flattened them against the window just beyond Po’s reach. She hoped Peter wasn’t having trouble mowing the lawn in this wind.

  “There you are.” Kate hurried over, bringing the sweet scent of lavender with her.

  She kissed Po on the top of her head. “I ran into Leah when I parked my bike in the alley. She’s coming in, too.” Kate dropped her backpack on the floor and sat down. She leaned her elbows on the table and looked at Po carefully. Her brows pulled together. “Po, you’re not sleeping.”

  “Not as much as I’d like. I think we are an inch away from putting all this tragedy behind us, Kate, and then that inch stretches out into a foot. And I can’t get my arms around it anymore.”

  “I wonder if that’s what Wesley felt like,” Kate said, “reaching for those bills. P.J. said someone must have planted those there, knowing what a scavenger Wesley was and that he couldn’t pass an open dumpster without a peek inside.”

  “That makes sense. I’m convinced that we’re right about the blackmail.”

  Leah, carrying several shopping bags, made her way to their table and sat down. “I love mid-term break.”

  “So you’re treating yourself.”

  “I went back to look at those paperweights, Po. They’re beautiful.”

  “You bought one?” Po lifted her eyebrows.

  “No,” Leah laughed. “But I did get one of the less expensive versions that Mary carries in the small gift boutique.”

  “Like the one Wesley Peet swiped,” Kate said.

  Leah nodded.

  They paused while the waitress took their order, then Leah continued.

  “Even the more inexpensive paper weights are quite beautiful. It’s hard to tell the difference, in fact, unless you line them up side-by-side. Why he picked one of those to fling through Mary’s window is a mystery. Wouldn’t a rock have done the same job?”

  “Hmm, good point,” Po said, pondering the thought.

  “I stopped in Ambrose and Jesse’s for some cheese and to do a little snooping,” Leah went on. “They have a big display of Chivas on that round rack in the middle of the store. Ambrose was adamant that he hadn’t left a bottle outside the door to get Wesley drunk. Said it was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. Why use a Cadillac when a Chevy would do the same job? he said.”

  Why indeed, Po thought. Except the Rolls Royce would be irresistible. Fail-safe. If someone was determined to get Wesley woozy, that was the way to go. And it had been a pint bottle, enough to make him sloppy and weak, but not fall-down drunk so he wouldn’t even see the dumpster or try to get the money. Whoever planned Wesley’s murder was careful, exact. And capable of buying expensive whiskey and littering one hundred dollar bills on the floor of the dumpster.

  “Did Ambrose say he’d sold any of that Scotch in the last couple days?” Po asked.

  “He said of course he did. It was the world’s most popular Scotch, or something to that effect.”

  “P.J. said they checked on that,” Kate said. “I guess it is popular — for those who can afford it. Jesse gave P.J. a long list. And only credit card and check purchases will be recorded with names. I saw the first couple of names and remember one because it surprised me.”

  “Who?” Leah held a forkful of eggs in mid-air.

  “Reverend Gottrey’s wife ordered a bunch of liquor recently. And Chivas was on the list. They had a reception for the new church elders.”

  “And served liquor?” Po asked.

/>   Kate nodded. “It was a fancy affair, I think, not at the church but at his home. They had elected three new elders — Mary Hill was one — and invited important people to greet the elders at a late-afternoon reception. Ambrose provided all the liquor and cheeses.”

  “Ambrose does a good business,” Po said. “These murders don’t seem to have harmed him at all.”

  “He seemed nervous, though,” Leah said. “Edgy, as if he were afraid something was going to come back and bite him.”

  “I think everyone is nervous.” Kate motioned to the young waitress for more coffee.

  Outside the window, leaves continued to dance against the windowpane and the wind picked up, grabbing loose pieces of paper and chasing them across the street and into the curbs. Turmoil, Po thought. But surely it would all come together soon.

  She listened to Kate and Leah’s chatter with half an ear, her eyes watching the easy flow of people, back and forth across the street, stopping now and then to greet a friend or neighbor. Daisy was still outside her store. She stood in front of the boxes now with a small shovel in her hand, loosening the dirt. Po held back a smile, wondering what color of plastic tulip would be carefully patted into that rich, nourishing soil.

  She looked across the street. Max’s office looked so forlorn. Someone had mowed the small patch of grass in front. But the curtains were drawn and the steps leading up to the door were littered with leaves. People walked by and looked up, wondering if he’d come back. And probably wondering, too, how such a nice man had gotten mixed up in such a sordid mess as the Elderberry murders. The door to the office opened, and for a second, Po expected Max himself to hurry down the steps, his ever-present briefcase tucked under his arm. She squinted against the morning sun to see who’d be coming out of the small law office. A cleaning person, perhaps? But the man walking down the steps would never stoop to cleaning someone’s office, at least not in his carefully pressed pants.