A Quilt in Time (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery) (20 page)

Lauren took her by the arm and turned her away from the desk.

“Don’t bother, it goes right over her head. Besides, you should have asked. I can get you the information. If you weren’t afraid Blondie is trying to move in on your man, you’d have realized that.”

“He is not my man,” Harriet sputtered. “Not right now, anyway.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” Lauren said and guided her out the door.

“Thoughts anyone?” Harriet asked when she was seated at the large table in the back room at Tico’s Tacos. Jorge had placed several baskets of warm tortilla chips on the table, along with queso dip, guacamole and several styles of salsa. She dipped a chip into the queso and waited for someone to speak.

“Let me see if I understand,” Robin began. “The independent living group at the senior center is asking us to investigate the killing of Seth Pratt and have offered their help. Their special skills include being a former bookie and a retired CIA employee of some sort as well as at least one prize-winning quilter.”

“That’s it in a nutshell,” Lauren confirmed.

“We’re not seriously considering taking them up on it, are we?” Robin asked, looking around the table at her friends.

Jorge came in with a pitcher of lemonade in one hand and a pot of hot coffee in the other.

“I wouldn’t reject them out of hand just because they are old and live in a center,” he said and set the drinks on a side table next to an assembly of glasses and mugs. “You ladies can help yourselves to drinks, here. I can tell you Mickey used to be a real player in this town, according to some of my customers. I got a group of old guys who play poker here on Wednesday nights. They still talk about him.”

“What about Josephine?” Harriet asked.

Jorge shook his head. “Her, I don’t know.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Robin cautioned. “Most of the people the CIA employs are accountants and lawyers.”

“What about Janice?” Mavis asked. “She’s younger than the other two and wheelchair-bound. Do you know her?”

Jorge looked at the ceiling in thought for a moment.

“I think I remember something about that. If I’m thinking of the right person, it was very hush-hush, something about a scorned lover seeking revenge. There was a suggestion her car had been rigged to crash; then, all of a sudden, someone squashed the story. No one talked about it, nothing. Months later, she showed up in the Foggy Point Senior Center.” He shook his head. “It was all very mysterious.”

“They seem to want to help Sarah,” Carla suggested in a quiet voice.

“Carla’s right,” Harriet said. “They mentioned that they thought Howard would try to make Sarah a scapegoat. They didn’t really say why they thought that, though.”

Mavis got up and went to the drinks table.

“I can see why they wouldn’t think Sarah was a killer.” She poured coffee into two cups and set them on the table in front of Connie and Beth. “Anyone else?” Robin raised her hand, and Mavis poured another cup. “The real question is why they think Howard would want to frame his own daughter for murder.”

Harriet joined her and started pouring and handing out glasses of lemonade.

“The obvious reason would be to avoid any negative publicity for the senior center and its new, probably expensive, memory care unit. Is that enough of a reason to sacrifice your own daughter?”

Lauren twirled a chip into the guacamole and paused before popping it into her mouth.

“Let’s keep in mind that Howard isn’t Sarah’s dad. He’s her stepdad—big difference.”

“True,” Harriet said. “She referred to him as her father, but when she told us about Seth, she made it clear they weren’t blood relatives.”

“The residents probably know the most about what goes on at that place, next to the family,” Aunt Beth said.

“And they can move around more easily,” Mavis added. “If they get found where they shouldn’t be, they can always blame it on confusion.”

“They’re also more vulnerable,” Robin cautioned. “Remember, the center controls their food and drugs. If whoever killed Seth works there, it would be easy for him to drug those old people if he becomes suspicious.”

“If the killer does work at the center, they’re all in danger anyway,” Harriet pointed out. “The killer might not be done yet.”

Connie stood up.

“For all we know, Seth might have figured out who killed Rod’s aunt and others. If he was murdered for that knowledge, the killer might go back to his angel of death activities.”

“We need a little more information before we go down that path,” Robin said. “It hasn’t been confirmed that Rod’s aunt was murdered yet, has it?”

“No, but we’ve hired a private medical examiner to investigate our suspicions.”

Harriet cleared her throat.

“Let’s take one case at a time. I agree we don’t want to put our new quilting friends in danger, but on the other hand, they do have a lot of information. I think we should at least talk to them. Before we go any further, though, I’d like to talk to Sarah. She should be able to answer a few questions.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Aunt Beth said with a smile for her.

“We have all the curtains finished, too,” Mavis added. “Now you have a real reason to go.”

Lauren sighed and looked at the ceiling, then pulled out her smartphone and opened the calendar app.

“I know, Kemosabe, checking my schedule as we speak.” There was a pause. “I’ve got a nine o’clock conference call, and then I’m free. Not free free—I have to work sometime, but I can go with to the shelter and to take batting to the batty, I mean, the seniors.”

“While you all are doing that, I’ll research the newspaper archives for stories about Janice and Mickey,” Aunt Beth offered.

“You go, girl,” Lauren said.

“Anyone want to quilt at my house tomorrow?” Harriet asked. “We all should know more by then, and I don’t know about you all, but I need to work some more on my bed quilt for the shelter.”

Mavis took a sip of her coffee.

“Sounds good to me.”

The group agreed to meet in the afternoon to give everyone time to do their agreed-upon tasks.

“I can’t tell you how much the women here will appreciate your gift,” Georgia Hecht said to Lauren and Harriet as they installed the last rod and straightened the curtain hanging from it. “The rooms look so much brighter already.”

Harriet stepped down from the ladder she been on so she could reach the top of the bathroom window.

“Would it be appropriate for us to provide some coordinating paint for the walls? We’d be sure we got the kind that was safe to use around babies.”

“I think that would be wonderful,” Georgia replied. “As you can tell, we had a large batch of commercial paint donated by a contractor who was working on our original remodel. She had it left over from another job. It was good to have, but pale gray is a bit monotonous.”

“Great. I’m happy to buy a few gallons, and I’m sure my aunt will donate some, also.”

“Me, too,” Lauren said with a small sigh. “A little color on the walls will show our quilts to their best advantage.”

“I can’t thank you enough. I’m sure our residents will be happy to do the actual painting, so don’t worry about that.” Georgia stepped back to look at the curtain as Harriet tugged again at its bottom edge.

“My aunt said to tell you the wrinkles will disappear on their own, but if you want to speed the process, you can spritz the curtains with a little water.”

“Good to know,” Georgia said. “Tell your aunt I appreciate the tip. Before you go, your friend Sarah asked if you could come up to her room for a few minutes and talk to her. She’d come down, but the doctor doesn’t want her going up and down stairs until her knee injury is more healed.”

“We’d love to see her,” Harriet said.

“Especially since that’s the whole reason we’re here,” Lauren murmured so only Harriet could hear.

“I think she could use the support,” Georgia said. “She’s having a pretty hard time. No one comes here in great shape, but—and believe me, I wouldn’t be talking to you about this if we weren’t seriously worried about Sarah—she’s not doing well.

“Even though her fiancé was her abuser, she’s grieving his loss. When someone comes here, our staff and the other residents make an effort to let the new person know they aren’t alone, and that they’ve all had a similar experience.

“Sarah won’t talk to anyone. She just insists no one could possibly understand what she’s been through, and then she goes off by herself. We hear her crying during the night. She hardly eats, and she can’t possibly be healing properly without adequate nutrition and enough sleep.”

Harriet took a deep breath.

“We’ll see what we can do.”

The Sarah Harriet and Lauren found in the upstairs bedroom bore no resemblance to the young woman they’d been quilting with for the last year or more. She looked like she’d lost thirty pounds. Her previously rounded apple-cheeks were now sharply angled, the flesh of her face gray and sunken, making her bloodshot eyes look larger than normal.

She sat up in her bed, her ratty quilt clutched to her chest with her good hand, her mangled arm on a pillow lying on her belly. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed since they’d seen her last.

“Sarah?” Harriet said in a hushed voice.

Her eyes jerked toward the sound of Harriet’s voice, but she didn’t move.

“May we come in?”

When she didn’t reply, Lauren and Harriet eased into the room, shutting the door quietly behind them.

“Is he really dead?”

Harriet looked at Lauren and then back at Sarah.