A Murder of Taste: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery Read online

  But the usual joy she felt in creating art out of small pieces of fabric was missing today. And within an hour, Po had put all her supplies back into the closet and had pulled a frozen blackberry tart out of her freezer. Though she had told herself she would give Picasso a few days with family before stopping by to pay her respects, her resolve was lost in the need to give the small round man a hug and a homemade pastry. She ran a brush through her hair and in minutes was driving the short distance to his house.

  As she rounded the corner two blocks from Picasso’s house, a tall, familiar figure, burnished auburn hair tossed to the wind, caught Po’s eye. She pulled over to the curb and rolled down the car window. “So, Kate, you couldn’t wait either?”

  Kate stopped in her tracks and walked over to the car. She leaned into the open passenger window. “If you don’t mind my slightly sweaty body, I’ll ride the rest of the way. Couldn’t sleep much last night.” She opened the door without waiting for a response and slid onto the front seat. “Can’t get that little Frenchman off my mind. And nor can you, it looks like.”

  Po nodded as she accelerated the car. “I wanted to wait until relatives or whomever Picasso would surround himself with at a time like this were gone. But I couldn’t wait.” She pulled onto Picasso’s street, drove halfway down the block and pulled into a wide brick driveway that curved in a half-circle in front of the stately Tudor home. The only other car in the drive was Picasso’s small BMW.

  Kate eyed the manicured front lawn, then the tall leaded windows defining the front of the house. “It looks deserted,” she said.

  “Well, we can always leave the basket on the front step if he’s resting. He’ll appreciate the thought, I’m sure. And if Laurel’s family is here, they can have it for breakfast.” Po and Kate got out of the car, and Po lifted the basket holding her blackberry tart out of the back seat.

  But before they reached the front door, it was pulled open from the inside and a bedraggled, unshaven Picasso stood in the doorframe, beckoning them in.

  “Mes amies,” Picasso cried, pulling both women together into a tight hug. He stood slightly apart then, kissing them on each cheek. Finally, without a word, he drew them through the open door, through an elaborate foyer, and into a dark living room.

  “How are you, dear,” Po asked. “We’ve all been concerned, but we didn’t want to intrude.”

  Picasso shook his head and gestured for them to sit on one of the brocade loveseats framing the hand-carved walnut fireplace.

  “First we need some light.” Po walked over to a wall of windows covered with heavy drapes and pulled them apart. “There. Sunshine can help the soul heal, Picasso.” She sat down beside Kate on one of the loveseats.

  Picasso sat opposite them, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his knees. He wore an old pair of sweat pants that Po suspected hadn’t been taken off for a day or two. The rumpled figure seemed out of place in the expensively decorated room, a forlorn and lonely man, far older than his forty-nine years.

  “What has happened to my life?” he asked them simply. His large brown eyes were wet with sadness.

  “This is as bad as it can be, Picasso,” Po said. “But we are here, and we will help you through this.”

  “Have Laurel’s relatives left?” Kate asked. “Can we do anything for them?”

  Picasso shook his head. “There’s no one. No family.”

  “Laurel had no family?”

  “Oui,” Picasso said as he rose from the couch. “She was a lonely, lost soul when I met her.”

  “Well, she certainly blossomed under your love,” Po said. “Lauren was a beautiful woman.”

  “That was so important to her. To be beautiful. She had no money when we met. She was a frail, drab waitress working two shifts, but I made sure she had whatever she wanted to let that beautiful soul flourish—spas and hair treatments and a life that allowed her to shine. I didn’t even want her to work in the restaurant—but she wanted to come in once we moved here, just to get used to the town and meet the people, she said.”

  Kate listened carefully, looking now and then at the enormous painting of Laurel above the fireplace. Drab was a word that could never, even in her imagination, be applied to Laurel St. Pierre. “Was it hard for Laurel to move to Kansas from New York?”

  Picasso shook his head vehemently. “No, no. It was hard for me!” He punched his hand into his chest and forced out a small laugh. “I loved New York, I loved my restaurant. I made fistfuls of money, more than in my dreams. But when Laurel came into my life, she wanted a quiet life—she was brought up in a small town, like me. So we found this little place, this empty storefront in this sweet little town. And we’ve been happy here, mostly—” His voice dropped off and he closed his eyes, shaking his round head slowly.

  Po rose from the couch and walked over to where Picasso stood beside the fireplace. She hugged him briefly. “Do not pull away from those who care about you, Picasso.”

  “That is music to my ears, Po. The police, they ask so many questions. They wonder if Laurel had enemies. Laurel, with enemies? How foolish and silly. There was no one who would hurt her. No one. She was a beautiful flower.”

  “Do you have any idea what happened, Picasso?”

  “Certainment,” he said. The French word shot through the air like a bullet, and for the first time that day the spirit of the robust little Frenchman filled the room.

  “Yes?” Po prompted.

  “I know exactly what happened. It was a vicious robbery. Laurel always wanted much dollar bills in her purse. She then felt secure. So someone robbed her of her money and then the monster killed her.”

  The words were said with the unflagging assurance that this was, indeed, the only possible scenario. The irrefutable truth.

  “And the police, this is what they say?”

  “They look for problems, they ask about boyfriends—what an awful thing to ask. They ask about trouble in our marriage. Trouble? I would have died for Laurel. I would have given my life for her.”

  The quick look that passed between Po and Kate carried a single memory—that of P.J.’s recent news that Laurel St. Pierre had filed a complaint against her husband. And looking back into Picasso’s sorrowful eyes, Po heard a conviction as sure as anything she had ever heard that Picasso loved his wife without question.

  “I know you loved her, Picasso,” Po said softly. “I can’t imagine what this must be like for you. But please know you have friends a minute away.” Po touched his arm, then joined Kate as they walked toward the door, not wanting to extend their uninvited visit too long.

  Picasso switched on the light as they entered the darkened foyer and Kate and Po stopped in their tracks.

  There on the wall, directly in front of them, hung a magnificent quilt. “Oh, Picasso—how absolutely gorgeous,” Kate said. She took a step closer. The quilt was a collection of brilliant blues and greens and yellows, swirling against a deep purple background, and in the center of the swirls, emerging from the folds of the cloth, was a beautiful bird.

  Picasso stood beside the two women, looking up at the quilt.

  “Where did you get this, Picasso?” Po asked. “It’s amazing.”

  “It was Laurel’s,” he said quietly.

  “Laurel made this?” Kate asked.

  He shook his head no. “It was a gift, she told me,” Picasso said. “Laurel cherished it. Often she’d take it down and lay it across the bed, fingering it. I’d often find her there, the quilt across her knees. She fingered it as if it were the most valuable thing in her life. I’d find her fixing small threads that came loose, sewing the edges. She cared for it as gently as the child we could never have.

  “I suggested to her once that we put it in the restaurant, but she was very distressed at the thought. She would not consider it. It could be only here, in our home, in this place of honor. And she was the only person who could touch it, she told me.”

  Po looked at the quilt again, her eyes soaking in the fine
detail, the lovely, perfect curves of the wings, the blend of appliqué and piecing, just like they were doing on the quilt for Picasso’s restaurant. She stared at the vines that wrapped around all sides of the quilt, twirling and curling like dancing nymphs.

  “I am so pleased you like it,” Picasso said, watching Po’s eyes devour the quilt. “You ladies know so much about quilts. I said once we should invite you all over to see it, but—” Picasso’s sentence dropped off, and then he looked up and said, almost apologetically, “—but she said this was private. Not for other eyes.”

  Po watched him look up again at the quilt. It was almost as if he were seeing images of Laurel in this piece of art that she had loved.

  Picasso shook his head sadly from side to side, then walked to the door, holding it open for his guests. He forced a smile to his lips. “Thank you, Kate and Po. Your visit to me today means very much.”

  Po looked back at the quilt, committing it to memory. Then she accepted Picasso’s kiss to each cheek and followed Kate through the front door and down the steps to the car.

  “Po, what’s wrong?” Kate buckled her seatbelt, her eyes on Po as she sat unmoving behind the steering wheel of the car. Her eyes looked straight ahead, through the windshield, but what she saw seemed to Kate to be very far away. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Po glanced back at Picasso’s house, then strapped her own seatbelt in place and looked at Kate. “Maybe I have, Kate. It’s that quilt. I would swear on a stack of Bibles that I’ve seen it before, and it wasn’t hanging on Picasso’s wall.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The need to buy groceries and clean her family room before friends arrived for supper kept Po from dwelling on the familiar quilt, though images of the bird were in her mind’s eye as she prepared the béarnaise sauce for tonight’s fillets and piled buffet dishes on the end of the table for dinner. When P.J. and Kate arrived a short while later, Po sent them out back to manage the grill while she went upstairs to take a quick shower and try to wash away the disturbing thoughts.

  “Kate and P.J., you’re in charge,” she had said to them. “Make sure it’s wonderful.”

  P.J. feigned a bow. “You’ve any doubts, madame?” He grinned at Po to pull her out of her thoughts, then held the porch door open for Kate and followed her outside while Po retreated upstairs.

  “She’s just worried about Picasso, P.J.,” Kate said, placing the platter of steaks beside the grill.

  “Well, she may have something to worry about.” He opened the heavy cast iron lid and poked the coals to life that Po had lit earlier. Crimson embers lit up the night. Kate handed P.J. a long fork and he speared each thick steak and placed it on the grill. “What do you mean, P.J.?”

  “I think this doesn’t look good for Picasso right now, is all I mean.”

  “P.J., you’re crazy,” Kate said. Her fists dug into the sides of her waist to keep her from shoving P.J. right off the edge of Po’s porch. The evening air was brisk, and small gaslights dotted the wooded area beyond the deck, casting shadows across the spring lawn.

  “Calm down, Kate,” P.J. said. His brow was furrowed, and the look of levity that usually lit his face had disappeared. He brushed the top of each steak with a thin layer of butter and olive oil. For a moment the sizzle of fat dripping on the coals was the only noise in Po’s backyard. P.J. concentrated on the grill, his eyes not meeting Kate’s.

  When Kate spoke again, her voice was softer, but still edged with anger. “It’s just that Picasso is such a kind, good man,” she said. “And if you could have heard him earlier today, you’d never in a million years doubt his love for his wife. And what about the guy I saw in the park with Laurel, P.J.? Why isn’t he on the top of your list?”

  “We’re looking into that, Kate. But we’ve nothing more than what you’ve told us. And that’s not much. Your description includes half of the county. And others have come forward telling of seeing Laurel with different men—even that little waiter at the restaurant spent time with her. But Picasso is the one she was calling abusive.”

  “But he loved her more than you can imagine, P.J. I am sure of that.”

  “I’m not doubting the man’s love, Kate. But people sometimes do bad things to people they love. Take you—” He tried to joke her out of the moment. “Look how nasty you’re being to me—and God knows you’re crazy about me.”

  But Kate would have none of it. “I think that’s one of the things that’s desperately wrong with our legal system, P.J. We say people are innocent until proven guilty, but then the news gets out there—and the whole world treats you like you’re guilty without any proof whatsoever.”

  The late afternoon news had startled not only Kate, but anyone who knew Picasso and had ever felt his gracious hospitality in the French Quarter bistro. “A small town restaurateur may have some connection to his wife’s murder,” the reporter on the Kansas City, Missouri, news channel had announced, and then went on to talk of possible marital discord that an unidentified source had passed the reporter’s way.

  “I don’t know how that story ever got on the news tonight. I guess it’s the weekend doldrums—there’s nothing else to talk about. But it was all some reporter’s conjectures, Kate. The police wouldn’t say anything like that at this point.”

  Kate handed P.J. a cup of wine sauce for the meat. “So the police are convinced Picasso is innocent?” Her unrestrained fists returned to her hips.

  “The police aren’t convinced you’re innocent, Kate. The guys assigned to the case are just beginning to look into it. Everyone has to be looked at. The guy in the park—whoever he is—the people in the restaurant. Friends of Laurel’s. It was a murder, Kate.”

  “Are you two almost ready with the steaks?” Po called through the screen door. She stepped into the doorway, looking refreshed in pale tan slacks and a black sweater.

  “Five minutes max, boss lady,” P.J. called back, then turned a row of large white mushrooms on the top burner and brushed them generously with garlic butter. He had become Po’s Sunday night barbecue doyen in recent months, a role that originated with Sam Paltrow. For years Sam had welcomed friends and neighbors to his Sunday night suppers, and the tradition continued after his death when force of habit and a yearning for Sam and Po’s hospitality brought people to Po’s doorstep with a bottle of wine in hand or a freshly baked pie nestled in a wicker basket. Sometimes there was a crowd, sometimes a small intimate group, and sometimes Po herself cancelled it because she had a book deadline or another engagement. But in recent months P.J. had been a regular, a fact Po attributed to Kate’s weekly presence. But whatever the reason he came, his barbecue skills were nearly as fine as her husband’s had been, and Po took full advantage of it.

  “Well, just for the record, P.J.,” Kate said, “Picasso is a good man. And I’m not so sure his wife was a perfect person. In fact, I suspect there were plenty of people who wouldn’t be terribly sad to have Laurel St. Pierre off their radar screen.”

  “That’s a little harsh, Kate.”

  Kate was silent. She had no basis for her strong words, but she felt them deep inside of her. Laurel had always made her uncomfortable, and instinct told her there were things about the woman that would surprise all of them, including Picasso.

  P.J. looked up from the grill and saw the mix of emotion cloud Kate’s face. “It’ll be okay, Katie,” he said. His voice was gentle now. “If there’s something we need to know about Laurel, we’ll find it out. Now help me with these steaks so we can fatten you up a bit.” He pierced the plump fillets with the fork and piled the meat on a platter, then handed it to Kate. As he piled the mushrooms into a bright blue ceramic bowl, he grinned and winked at Kate, trying hard to force a smile to her lips. “Ah, we make a grand culinary team, Kathleen Anne Mary Simpson. Let’s now go inside and accept the well-deserved praises of our hungry guests.”

  Kate looked at him hard and long, then shook her head and allowed the small smile he was waiting for. “You can be so absolu
tely irritating, P.J. Flanigan—always seeing all sides of everything. But you make it impossible for me to stay mad at you. And I hate that.” She turned and headed for the porch door with the bowl of mushrooms held between her hands. “Fatten me up, my foot,” she muttered, and walked into the kitchen.

  “Ah, perfectly done, P.J.,” Po greeted them, and relieved Kate of her bowl. “I think we’ll be a small group tonight.” She gestured to the family room where Phoebe sat curled up on the couch with Jimmy and the twins, reading to them about a little boy who gave a moose a muffin. Gus Schuette and his wife Rita sat with Eleanor, debating the merits of martinis. Rita was a definite asset to any gathering, her keen wit and outspoken opinions fodder for lively conversation. “Max Elliott said he’d be by, too, so let’s wait a couple more minutes,” Po said. She’d been happy when Max called, and hoped there’d be a moment or two to ask him subtly about Laurel St. Pierre. She was surprised at Marla’s gossip—she hadn’t known Max even knew Laurel. Besides, the thought of anyone not liking Max Elliott was difficult to imagine.

  As if on cue, a knock at the front door announced Max’s presence. “I’ve brought a couple more friends,” he called from the door, then walked on in. “Knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course not, Max, now get on in here where I can see that handsome face of yours,” called Po.

  Max entered the family room, assisted by a short cane that was the only sign of a serious car injury the year before. “Folks, you all know Bill McKay—and his lovely fiancé, Janna.” Max bowed toward the woman standing beside the imposing Bill McKay.

  “Of course we do. Welcome,” Po said warmly, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and hurrying across the room to greet the new arrivals. “We’re happy you’re here. You probably know everyone—and if not, they know you, Billy, from seeing your face all over town. I swear I’ve seen more of you in the last six months on posters and the like than since you moved back after college.”