Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 9) (14 page)

“
Did
you do anything?”

“Only talk to Leo Tabor and his wife. Mavis and my aunt thought he might know something because he had taken Amber to the police when she was wandering the neighborhood.”

“And because he was the number-one suspect back then?”

“Not really. Avanell Jalbert had told them he wasn’t a molester or anything else. He had worked for her. They really thought he might know something. He was really nice, but all he knew was that Amber wandered the neighborhood unattended.”

“You will let me know if you hear anything else, won’t you?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

Harriet felt only a little guilty that she hadn’t mentioned the Loose Threads’ plan to gather information. She was also sure Morse wasn’t telling her everything the police knew.

“Let’s go see if we can find out where Juana’s been.”

Morse led the way through the maze until they reached a police technician sitting in front of a computer screen.

“Have you been able to get the data from the GPS tracker on Juana Lopez-Montoya?”

The technician clicked a few keys and opened a new screen that showed a map on the top half and a list below it. He pointed to the map.

“This shows you where she went, and the list below tells you all the locations where she stopped for more than ninety seconds, and how long she was in those locations.”

He clicked the keyboard again, and a new map was superimposed over Juana’s trail.

“This is the map of where you said your aunt’s car was.” He pointed to first one then a second place on the map. “She was at or near the grocery store when you were there. And she was within a block of you when you went to the quilt store, but she was only there for four minutes, and it looks like she stayed at the corner. Was your car parked close to the intersection?”

Harriet shook her head.

“No, I was in the middle of the block.”

The tech turned away from his computer and looked at Detective Morse.

“Someone needs to request the security footage from the grocery store. I can check it out if you get it.”

“I’ll tell the officers who are investigating the accident what you found. Thanks for rushing it.”

The tech smiled.

“We aim to please.”

He turned around and was clicking back to the screen he’d been working on when they interrupted him before they left his cubicle.

They started back toward the front desk. Morse stopped and turned to Harriet.

“I’ll be surprised if Juana was able to work on your aunt’s car in the grocery store parking lot without anyone interrupting her. This is a small town, and a lot of people know Juana. If she was messing with a car in broad daylight, I’d like to think someone would have come over to see what she was doing.”

“If she didn’t do it, then who did?”

Morse sighed.

Harriet clicked her phone on to display the time and did a quick calculation. If she didn’t linger long, she could swing by Aunt Beth’s and see how she was doing. It might make her aunt feel better to know it probably wasn’t Juana who’d tampered with her car.

She stopped at the florists and picked up an arrangement of lilies and roses and then drove out to the cottage on the strait.

“Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” she asked when she’d let herself in.

Aunt Beth was propped in her recliner with a pillow under her feet. She clicked her television off with the remote.

“They just said I had to rest.”

Harriet set the vase of flowers on the coffee table.

“I’m pretty sure when they said only get up to go to the bathroom they were thinking you’d be in bed the rest of the time.”

“I’m fine here. If you must know, the doctor called this morning after Connie and Mavis left. He said the radiologist looked at my x-rays and decided I chipped my ankle bone. They don’t do anything different for that, but it did give me the chance to ask if sitting in my recliner was okay; and he said if I put a pillow under my foot to help with the elevation, it was fine.” She pressed her lips together and gave Harriet a smug look.

“Okay, fine, excuse me for trying to take care of you.”

Aunt Beth’s face softened.

“Oh, honey, I know you mean well, but you know how I hate daytime television. I’d go crazy laying in that hide-a-bed worrying about what sort of trouble you were getting yourself into.

“Can you sit a minute and tell me what happened at your meeting. And don’t try to tell me you gals just talked about the quilts.”

Harriet opened her mouth to speak, but the doorbell rang before she could get any words out.

“Are you expecting anyone?” she asked as she got up to answer the door.

“No one called ahead.”

She opened the door and found DeAnn on the porch, a vase of purple and yellow wildflowers in hand.

“Is this a good time to visit? If it isn’t, I can just drop these and go.” She pulled a card from the side pocket of her purse.

Harriet swung the door wide to let her in.

“I think my aunt is up for a short visit.” She took the flowers and set them on the bookcase. “Would you like tea or anything?”

DeAnn set her purse down and perched on the corner of the sofa closest to Beth.

“How are you doing? Robin told me your car was tampered with?”

“It’s nothing serious. I’m a little banged and bruised, but I’ll be fine in a few days. Enough about me. I’m so sorry to hear about your sister. How are you holding up?”

DeAnn’s shoulders sagged, and she looked first at Harriet and then Beth.

“This is going to sound terrible, and I am sad about my sister, but right now, what I feel most is relief. Am I a terrible person?” Her eyes swept from Harriet to Beth again, and a tear dribbled from her left eye.

Beth plucked a couple of tissues from the box on her side table and handed them to Harriet to pass to DeAnn.

“Honey, you are not a terrible person. Tell me what’s going on.”

DeAnn dabbed at her eyes with the tissue.

“I’m terrible to even say this, but Molly’s obsession with finding out what happened to Amber and her was really disruptive. I know I should feel sorry for her, and I do…did…but her search dominated our family in more ways than one.

“My parents drained their savings account paying for her to go on one wild goose chase after another, to say nothing of the years of therapy they paid for. They put up the money for her to start her nonprofit, and I know it’s a good cause. Who can argue with helping the families of missing and exploited children? But they can’t retire now because they gave more than they really had.

“And then there were the ‘crisis’ calls. It didn’t matter if it was their grandchild’s birthday party, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or any other holiday—if Molly called with a hot lead, or called because she’d followed a false lead one more time, they ran to her side, wherever she was, ruining whatever we had planned.”

She dabbed her eyes again.

“I know I sound selfish, but how many times do you have to be taken advantage of by people trying to get your reward money for tips before you figure it out. There are no witnesses waiting to come forward. No one wants her to solve this. And now she’s found out in a horrible way that whoever killed Amber and knocked her out doesn’t want anyone to know what really happened.”

She dropped her hands into her lap.

“Why couldn’t she just be happy she’d survived?”

Harriet and Beth looked away while DeAnn sobbed. She wiped her eyes again and straightened her shoulders. She looked up at Beth.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come over and dump on you two. I really did want to know how you were doing and say I hope you feel better.”

“Honey, you come by anytime. You’re in a real difficult situation, and I’m sure you’re going to feel a lot of things when you think about your sister. It’s okay, however you feel. And I’m sure there is a sense of relief when you consider your parents’ situation. No matter how much you loved Molly and how hurt she was by what had happened to her, she wasn’t seeing how she was causing problems for your parents. I’d be willing to bet you and your David have been thinking about how you were going to be able to support your parents when they can’t work anymore. Now maybe they can save a little for the future.”

DeAnn’s face relaxed and her lips twitched into a half-smile.

“Thank you. Now, I really do need to go.”

“You come back anytime, honey. And bring those cute kids by. Those boys are going to be in college before I see them again.”

DeAnn laughed.

“It’s not that bad. They’re not out of grade school yet. I’ll be sure and bring them by when all this…” She gestured to indicate everything that was going on. “…stuff, is over.”

“You do that, and thank you for the beautiful flowers and card.”

DeAnn picked up her purse and left.

Aunt Beth picked up an appliqué flower block from the table beside her chair and began stitching the edge of a leaf with neat invisible stitches.

“So, tell me, what did you all figure out at the meeting this morning?”

Harriet recited the high points of the discussion.

“I’ve already done my first task, which was checking in with Detective Morse about Juana. I have to see if Josh Phillips was still in town. Carla is checking on the psychic Molly went to, Lauren is going to research Molly’s work background to see if there’s anyone else who had a grudge against her. Robin is checking court records to see what Gary Alexander is up to.” She explained about James’s mother and her neighbor. “On a happier note, Jenny came to coffee, and she looked really good.”

“That’s good,” Aunt Beth interrupted.

“Yes, it is. Anyway, she’s going to the bookstore and that convenience store out by the highway to see if we can figure out where Molly’s new boyfriend was during the critical time. And I don’t know if you’ve talked to Connie or Mavis yet, but they’re going out to the homeless camp to see what Joyce and her crew know.”

“Is anyone going to go talk to Sandra Price? She must have a theory about what happened to her daughter.”

“Hmmm, we didn’t talk about that. We were more focused on Molly and who would have wanted her dead.”

“If it was related to what happened before, she might have some ideas.” Aunt Beth squirmed in her chair and repositioned her foot.

“Is your foot hurting? Is it time for a pain pill?”

Aunt Beth gave her a weak smile.

“I haven’t been taking them. I hate how that stuff makes me feel.”

“You mean free of pain?”

“You stop your sassing and get me a glass of water to take it with.”

Harriet laughed as she went into the kitchen to do as she was told.

“Do any of the Threads have a relationship with Sandra Price?” she asked when she’d returned and handed her aunt the water.

Aunt Beth took her pill then rubbed her chin with her hand.

“I think Connie had her son in school. She’s probably your best bet. Of course, DeAnn’s family knows her—they had a lot of contact when the little girl disappeared. But they’ve got enough on their plate right now. I’m going to snooze a while, and then I’ll call Connie and see if she can talk to Sandra.
You
need to go get stitching on those quilts.”

“Let me know what she says, and you call me if you need anything.”

Beth closed her eyes.

“A little peace and quiet might be nice,” Harriet heard her murmur as she made her way out.

Harriet was doing the yoga stretches Robin had taught her when Carla knocked on her studio door several hours later.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said and hesitated on the porch when Harriet opened the door wide.

“Come on in. I’ve been working on this quilt for hours. I was just stretching before I take Scooter out and fix something to drink. Can you stay and have a snack?”

Carla looked at her shoes.

“I don’t have to pick Wendy up from playgroup for…” She looked at her phone. “…forty-five minutes.

“Can you go in and pour us some lemonade while I take the little prince out?” Harriet’s dog was lying in his bed, his snout over the edge, looking from Harriet to Carla and back to see if anyone was really going to make him get up.