A Patchwork of Clues Read online

  “Hard to say, Danny,” Kate said. “But what I do know is that you’re heading for a case of pneumonia if you don’t get back in that house. Besides, that flapping robe is making me think I’ll be seeing something I definitely don’t want to if you don’t cover up. You’re godawful indecent.”

  “Bossy as my Ella,” he shot back to her. “I told your ma she shouldn’t let you go off to that hippie school in California. Get on with you now. And let me know what all that racket’s about, you hear?” He swatted the air with the rolled-up newspaper and struggled up the steps to his door.

  Kate waited to be sure he made it safely inside, then pedaled down the quiet street and around the corner toward the Elderberry shops. She’d promised Po she’d at least try to be on time this week, though she suspected her godmother would be happy enough if she just showed up.

  The weekly meetings were important to Po, and Kate knew exactly why. And the reason reluctantly touched her, though being in a quilting group didn’t. It was the last thing she wanted in her life right now. But it made it easier for Po to honor the request Kate’s mom had made to her before she died last year.

  “Keep in touch with her, Po. Be there for her. But she needs to move on, to live the life she was building in California.” No one told her that’s what her mom said. But she knew that’s what she would have said to her closest friend. Or something close to it.

  “Let her go, then call her often,” her mother would have said.

  Kate had abandoned that other life in the blink of an eye when her mother got sick. She knew the life was still out there—regular calls from friends and even her San Francisco employer who was still holding her editing job told her as much. She missed them terribly, missed the city vibe and the small towns down the coast. She missed visiting UC Santa Cruz and the Bohemian vibe she loved so when she was a student there. She missed the ocean, the high wild surf that sent her body soaring in the air as if defying gravity. And she missed Jake. Quiet and understanding and patient.

  But for reasons even Kate herself didn’t completely understand, she’d postponed going back to her Berkeley apartment after her mother died. “Not yet,” she had told Po and anyone else who asked, “but soon,” though Kate herself couldn’t quite define what that meant. Somehow her mom’s illness and the days Kate had spent caring for her, feeding her, holding a glass of water and straw for her to sip, had defied a concept of time.

  So even now, these months later, she still hadn’t managed to get a sense of it all. Of days and months and years. Instead she was still in Crestwood, Kansas, living in the three-bedroom house her mom had left to her. “Boxing things up, getting the house ready to sell.” That’s what she had told some of the neighbors. But few boxes and Realtors had entered or left the house.

  And if that weren’t enough to make her mom pay attention from her new place—or at the least be curious—she was spending Saturday mornings at her mother’s old quilting bee, something she had sworn she’d never ever do.

  Kate disliked crafts of any sort. But Po had been slightly pushy about it—unusual for her. And it was difficult—no, make that impossible—to say no to that woman, even if you had two left thumbs and knew diddlysquat about quilting.

  Kate had found most of the quilting supplies that she needed in a black trunk, pushed to the back of her mother’s closet after she got sick. Going through the trunk had been an unexpected journey for Kate, one that took her back through years and smells and the feeling of her mother being right there at her side.

  And she had gotten lost in it. She had liked the time spent going through the neat stacks of bright, lovely fabrics that her mother had separated by color and pattern and intensity—calico from stripes, mini from large prints. And beneath all her grumbling about hanging with the quilting group, Kate suspected that was exactly why Po had insisted she try her hand at quilting—because fingering the washed colorful fabrics and breathing in the smell of lilac that permeated everything her mother had touched brought a bit of Meg Simpson right smack back into Kate’s life.

  The scream of a second siren broke into Kate’s thoughts just as she turned onto Elderberry Road. She braked to a stop directly in front of Marla’s Bakery and Café and watched the police car speeding by. Its spinning light splashed red shadows across the front of Flowers by Daisy, the Elderberry Bookstore, and on down the block of uneven brick stores until it screeched to a stop directly in front of Selma Parker’s quilt shop.

  * * * *

  Phoebe Mellon had been up for nearly two hours. Not by choice, Lord knows, but neither God nor man could keep Jude and Emma, her eleven-month-old twins, asleep past 6 a.m. And then those blasted sirens scared little Emma half to death and Phoebe had her hands full with diapers and nursing and crying babies. Finally, she settled them both in the playpen, diapered and happy with dribbles of mother’s milk collecting in the corners of their mouths, and she shook her sleeping husband awake.

  “It’s Saturday, Jimmy dear,” she said sweetly, planting a kiss on his forehead. “And I’m off to my quilting group.”

  James Burgess Mellon III groaned. He pulled one eye open and watched his bride of not quite two years slip out of her robe and into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Even in jeans, no makeup, and her hair a floppy mess of white-gold waves, Phoebe excited him. He’d fallen in love with all five feet of her the first night he laid eyes on her. He was standing alone at the bar at Nick’s—a law student hangout—and there she was, bulldozing her way through that mass of inflated egos and legal brawn, a loaded platter of beers hoisted high above her head. And he’d fallen for her hook, line, and sinker. They were married the day after his law school graduation, and barely nine months later, Jude and Emma burst into their small world and filled it to the brim.

  “Well?” Phoebe said now, grinning down at him. Sunlight from the bedroom window lit her from behind and her hair frizzed up around her head like a halo. “Better get yourself out of that bed right now or I’ll be tempted to do evil things.”

  “Hmmmmm,” Jim murmured.

  Phoebe pulled the covers down until Jimmy shivered in the morning air.

  “Later, love,” she said. “Get up and earn your keep. Our beautiful babes are in the playpen. I’m outta here.”

  Phoebe blew him another kiss, spun around, and headed toward the back door of the house that her in-laws had given them for a wedding present. Phoebe knew the Mellons didn’t like her much, and the house was an attempt to disguise the fact that she had been a barmaid and pierced her ears far more than was socially acceptable at the Crestwood Country Club. The fact that she worked in a bar to pay her way through college because her family didn’t have a dime didn’t seem to alter the Mellons’ opinion. So they tried to make her more to their liking by wrapping her up in a lovely home and a membership to their club. “It’s the ‘My Fair Lady’ approach,” Phoebe explained to the quilters in her best Eliza Doolittle imitation: “‘I’ll be a proper wife in a proper house, I will.’” And then she’d giggled—that Goldie Hawn ripple that soon had them all pushing their quilting squares aside and reaching for tissues to dab the laughter from the corners of their eyes.

  The house was nice, Phoebe admitted, although she still wasn’t used to it—who needed three bathrooms? But the yard would be great for the kids as they grew, and Jimmy seemed to like the place, so she’d moved on in and even tried her best to keep it looking decent.

  Phoebe checked the twins one final time, planting kisses on their sweet-smelling heads. What absolutely wondrous little people they are, she thought. Then she grabbed a jacket off the brass hook in the back hallway and flew out the door, bounding across the street and down the few short blocks to the Elderberry shops.

  * * * *

  For the fourth time in as many days, Maggie Helmers couldn’t get her truck started. A brief trip under the hood with pliers seemed to do the trick. “Soon, dear truck,” she said out loud, patting th
e hood affectionately, “I may have to put you out to pasture.”

  A glance at her oversized wristwatch convinced her to let the grease smudges remain on her nose and cheeks until she got to Selma’s. She climbed into the pickup and sped off across town toward the Elderberry shops.

  It took fifteen minutes for Maggie to drive from her veterinary clinic at the edge of Crestwood to Elderberry Road. These Saturday mornings at Selma’s were darn near sacred to her—she wouldn’t miss them for anything, even though it didn’t make practical sense to close her veterinary clinic for those three or four prime Saturday hours. Her ex-husband told her she was crazy to forgo that extra revenue, but Maggie had laughed at that. She figured that anyone who had lost thousands of dollars at Kansas City’s gambling boats and then tried to sue them for encouraging his addiction didn’t have much right to judge other people’s sanity.

  Quilting was her therapy, and Maggie savored every single minute of it, from picking the colors and choosing the fabrics to cutting shapes and pinning it all together in a marvelous, intricate pattern. And she loved the circle of women whose company she shared every Saturday morning. The group was an odd hodgepodge, folks who might not have found each other in ordinary life, but the quilting gathered them together, and they opened their lives to each other. They even shared Maggie’s passion for “fat-lady” art, finding pieces to add to her collection at art fairs and small galleries and presenting them on her birthday with great fanfare.

  Maggie had started her art collection for fun—a grand celebration of grand women. But with the help of friends and family, it was growing into an amazing collection that included a Mexican collage of old women praying at the sea, smooth voluptuous soapstone statues, and a lovely carving. The quilters rejoiced over each new find.

  Having Kate come back to town was a special bonus in Maggie’s life too, even better than her collection of fat-lady art that filled her small home. She’d known Kate nearly all her life. They’d grown up in the same neighborhood, practically sisters, and to have Kate stay on after Meg Simpson passed was a gift Maggie relished. And being the friend that she was, she rarely teased her about being one of the worst quilters in the entire state of Kansas.

  Maggie crossed the Emerald River separating the two sides of town, turned onto a narrow one-way street that wound around the edge of Canterbury College (an illegal shortcut, but not patrolled on Saturdays), and spun around the corner onto Elderberry Road, her spare tire and toolbox sliding across the flat bed of her truck. Ahead, toward the end of the block, she spotted a crowd of people, an unusual sight at this hour on a Saturday morning, an hour before most of the shops opened their doors. The street was usually quiet. Not today. Maggie pulled over to the curb, jammed the gearshift into first, set the brake, and jumped out of the cab.

  * * * *

  Canterbury College was small in size and big in reputation. The large stone buildings, complete with ivy-covered walls, were nearly picture perfect—a fact several Hollywood producers had discovered and used to their advantage in filming movies on location in Crestwood. Inexpensive, good tax incentive, picturesque, and full of friendly people everywhere, that was the word that got out.

  Leah Sarandon remembered seeing one of those movies back east and wondering where its lovely location was—Connecticut? New Hampshire? Kansas, of course, would not have entered her mind, yet here she was, all these years later, a tenured Canterbury professor, walking across a movie-set campus that had become a cherished home to her.

  Leah picked up her pace and breathed in the crisp autumn air. Her long denim skirt brushed lightly against her ankles. People thought of Kansas and imagined tornadoes, not autumn days that touched on sheer perfection, with gentle breezes shaking crimson leaves from their branches, or unimaginable spring weeks with a startling profusion of pink and white dogwoods, deep red crabapple trees, tulips and daffodils and pansies spilling from yards and flower boxes. Leah loved the raw energy that the seasons poured into her soul.

  And she loved this Saturday morning quiet, too, the lovely lazy lull that allowed the whole campus to gear up for another week of learning. She had the small campus almost to herself, with just an occasional student or teacher headed toward the library for research or to the commons for coffee and maybe an early study session. She waved at a student, shifted her tote bag on her shoulder, and headed toward the far corner of campus and a large fenced-in home that anchored the school on the west side.

  Canterbury House, it was called, the place where Elliott Canterbury settled his family more than a century ago so he could build a thriving fur trading business along the banks of the Emerald River. (Local lore had it that whoever coined the name Emerald for this muddy river was thinking green for money.) Once done, he decided the town folks needed a college, and so he built them one in his backyard. It was separated from his large three-story home by a wrought-iron fence and an iron-tight will that made sure the college could never force family out of Canterbury House, or worse, tear it down. As long as there were Canterburys who wanted to live in the house, the house would be theirs.

  Leah’s dear friend Eleanor was the current resident—the eighty-five-year-old great-granddaughter of the college founder. She lived in the elegant home all alone, and that’s exactly the way Eleanor liked it.

  Leah spotted her ahead, the woman’s hand resting on a wrought-iron fence finial, waiting.

  “Hurry up, Leah,” Eleanor yelled out. “You’re poking along like an old lady.” She followed up with a strong, soaring laugh that spun around on the quiet air. Eleanor was as unpredictable as Kansas weather, but Leah never tired of her.

  The college students didn’t know what to think of her, and rumors percolated each fall with a new crop of freshmen. Tales of ghosts and spirits seen late at night in Canterbury House windows punctuated cafeteria gossip. Some talked about witches. Others were sure they spotted the slender spikey leaves of cannabis plants growing in a patch behind the house. And Eleanor loved every minute of it.

  “What’s that racket, Leah?” she asked now, her clear blue eyes looking into the distance.

  “Sounds like sirens to me,” Leah said, picking up Eleanor’s quilting bag and slipping the strap over her shoulder. “There’s probably a cat stuck up in a tree somewhere.”

  Eleanor took Leah’s arm. In her other hand she gripped a carved walking stick that helped her along uneven sidewalks and footpaths. She also used it often in heated conversations. “A little excitement in paradise. But let’s think big, Leah. Perhaps there’s a dastardly deed been done on Elderberry Road. And if so, my dear, I most definitely don’t want to miss out. Crime stimulates the senses. Onward.”

  Chapter 3

  Streak of Lightning

  Kate looked down the street at the small crowd gathering on the corner across from Selma’s shop. She spotted Phoebe immediately, her loose hair wild and lit by sunshine. She was standing on the edge of the crowd, staring at the quilt shop.

  “Phoebe,” Kate called at the top of her voice and pedaled fast down the street toward her.

  “What the heck is going on?” Phoebe demanded. She looked at Kate as if she were the source of the chaos.

  Kate slid off the bike and propped it against the lamppost. “I don’t know. I heard sirens,” she said. “And a police car nearly ran me off the road.”

  The two young women stared across the street, shielding their eyes from the sun and trying to see through the plate glass windows. The crowd began to spill over into the street and in minutes the other Saturday quilters were there—Leah, Eleanor, and Maggie—all hovering around the lamppost like moths.

  “I tried to park my truck in the alley behind the store,” Maggie said. She was slightly out of breath. “But I couldn’t get through—there’s an ambulance back there—right outside Selma’s back door.”

  “Selma’s? Is she all right?” Leah asked.

  “I haven’t seen her—they w
on’t let anyone in,” Phoebe said.

  “Where’s Po?” Kate pushed her sunglasses into her mass of auburn hair and stared across the street. She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest, squeezing back the fear.

  “There she is!” Phoebe pointed across the street. “She’s inside, but moving, so that’s good.”

  With great relief, the covey of quilters strained to see through the shop window. Several uniformed men and women scurried back and forth in front of bright bolts of fabric. And there in the center of it all was Selma Parker, a calm solid figure in the middle of the tempest. Po stood beside her.

  Eleanor squinted through her thick prescription sunglasses. “They both look fine. It’s much ado about nothing. A waste of our tax dollars.”

  “Susan!” Phoebe yelped, anxious to account for each one of the Saturday group. “Is she okay? Can anyone see her in there? I can’t see with all the police in the way.”

  Susan Miller had been a godsend to Selma, hiring on as assistant manager of the store the year before and allowing Selma to take an occasional day off. The group had promptly adopted her, pulling her into the space left by Helga Hansen, who had moved to Omaha. Susan’s artistic eye, her innate sense of color, and her flair for pushing a piece of a traditional quilt square into a patch of something extraordinary had urged the quilters on to new and adventurous ways of working. They still loved their traditional patchwork projects, but often, under Susan’s guidance, they played with new ideas—transforming photographs into quilt patterns, combining appliqué, patchwork, and needlework into single projects. Susan kept things fresh and exciting.

  “Susan’s okay. But she looks a little distraught.” Kate pointed to the west side of the store, where a slender figure was bent over in a straight back chair, her head in her hands.