Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 9) (5 page)

“I know that name,” Morse said. “When I switched to the cold case unit a couple of months ago, the team went through all the cold cases in Foggy Point for the last forty years. All of them are important, but we evaluate them for signs that the passage of time could help with their solution.

“For instance, sometimes, if a critical suspect has been jailed for something else or even died, witnesses who were afraid to testify before will speak to us. Often we already knew who the perpetrator was; we just needed a witness to recant an alibi or something like that.

“That being said, we looked at the Amber Price disappearance. We have nothing. No one saw anything. There was another child with her, but our notes say that child couldn’t remember anything, even with help from a memory recovery specialist. I take it that child is DeAnn’s sister?”

Lauren stood up and paced a few steps away before coming back.

“Half-sister,” she corrected. “She’s DeAnn’s half-sister, but that’s not actually what I asked you to come by for. Molly did ask me to help her dig for information about that time period in Foggy Point, but before I did that, I did my usual due diligence and ran a background check on Molly herself.”

Harriet raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

“Hey, you never know. I didn’t know if she’d go vigilante if I did find something about who took Amber Price. In my business, you can’t be too careful.”

“I thought you were a computer programmer and software designer,” Morse interrupted.

“I am. That’s my day job. You can’t imagine how many people come to me for help digging things out of the web. Dark and white.”

Morse glanced at Harriet, but Harriet just shrugged.

“Anyway,” Lauren continued in an emphatic tone. “While I was talking to her, I casually asked her about her abusive ex-boyfriend. Josh Phillips is his name. I thought that might be useful to know, and, boy, was it.

“Anyway, I also dug around seeing what I could find out about her non-profit. It seems on the up-and-up, by the way. When I was looking at the web page, it had been updated to reflect the three ten-thousand-dollar donors, but it said the new one wished to remain anonymous.”

“Really,” Harriet said.

“Really. It seemed a little fishy to me. Most people who donate that much want the publicity. Besides, this is Foggy Point. No one can keep that kind of secret. I thought it was possible it was someone out of our area, but if they’re from Seattle, it seems like they’d donate at the event the organization has coming up
there
in another month. Anyway, let’s just say I was curious.”

She stopped by the table and sipped her tea.

“I’ll admit this next part involved a bit of subterfuge.” She glanced at Detective Morse. “I called the Seattle office of the non-profit and told the sweet girl who answered that we were personalizing the quilts and I needed the donor’s name to put on the embroidered label. I swore I wouldn’t reveal it until the quilt was awarded. She confirmed the donor would be attending the auction and dinner.”

“And now you are going to betray that confidence?” Morse asked.

“I hadn’t planned on it. I was curious, and I expected it to be someone who was publicity shy, or Molly’s parents, or something like that.”

Harriet leaned forward in her chair. “So, who is it?”

Lauren tapped her tablet awake and turned it toward Harriet and Jane. A photo of a large blond man in a plaid button-down shirt and tan chinos filled the screen.

“And that would be?” Harriet asked.

Lauren turned the pad back around.

“None other than Joshua Phillips.”

“Whoa! Molly’s abusive ex?” Harriet asked.

“Didn’t I see an order of protection against him at the station?” Morse asked.

Lauren sat down and slid her tablet into her bag. Harriet leaned back in her chair.

“I see why you needed to tell someone,” she said.

“I wonder if he got some kind of special release to attend the event,” Morse said thoughtfully. She pulled a small notebook from her purse and wrote a note. “I’ll see if he has friends in high places who might have helped him out a little.”

“I thought you should know,” Lauren said.

“For once I have to agree. I don’t like you guys digging around in police matters, but this time it seems like you found something we would have missed. I’m sure Mr. Phillips was counting on that.”

Harriet stood up.

“Want to stay and press seams for us?”

Morse looked at her watch.

“I can do that for an hour or so.”

They carried their tea over to their workstations and began making squares for the quilts.

In spite of spending the previous night stitching into the wee hours, Harriet got up early to go for a run.

“You two behave yourselves while I’m gone,” she admonished Fred and Scooter, her cat and his canine protégé. Fred had spent the first few months of Scooter’s presence ignoring the small rescue dog Harriet had adopted, and then graduated to terrorizing him.

It had been either a show of dominance by the cat or some sort of boot camp because the result had been a recent rash of team mischief. The cat opened cabinet doors and tossed things like protein bars down to the small dog, who then chewed the packages open so they could both eat the contents. She was contemplating the possibility of installing child-proof latches on the cabinets as she stepped outside and onto her driveway to stretch before her run.

She was touching her toes when she heard the crunch of gravel. She looked up and saw a white late-model sedan approaching. The car stopped, and Molly Baker got out. She was wearing new-looking jeans and a purple hoodie.

“I hope it’s not too early to come by,” she said.

“I was about to go running.” Her intention should be obvious from how she was dressed and the fact she’d kept stretching, but she was hoping saying it would encourage Molly to keep it brief.

Molly came over and stood opposite her.

“I was talking to my sister last night, and she told me that you’ve solved a number of crimes in this area since you moved here.”

Harriet was trying to think of an appropriate reply, but Molly held her hands up in a “hear me out” gesture.

“I know you’re not a detective or anything—DeAnn told me. And she said you only investigated when it was someone you knew and the police were wrongly accusing them or something like that.”

“That’s all true. I don’t want to be a detective, either. I’m a quilter. On a few occasions, when someone close to me has been threatened, I’ve asked a few questions and talked to a few people.”

“And it resulted in the right person going to jail,” Molly stated. “That’s all I’m asking. The police say they’ve exhausted all evidence regarding Amber’s disappearance, and they all tell me to be happy I survived and to go out and do something wonderful with that gift.”

Harriet spread her feet apart and bent to touch her ankle with the opposite hand.

“That’s not bad advice.”

“I can’t move forward until I know what happened. I mean, what if
I
did something to Amber. We were always climbing on trees and stuff. What if she fell and hit her head, and I got scared and hid her body.”

Harriet straightened up and put her hands on Molly’s shoulders.

“Molly, you were—what? Five years old? What five-year old could have pulled off that sophisticated of a plan? Besides, they probably searched with dogs. They would have found her. They found
you
miles away from where you were playing, in Fogg Park. You couldn’t have walked that distance.”

“I suppose. It doesn’t ever go away, though.” She balled her hands into fists and pressed them into her temples. “I have to know what happened.”

Harriet sighed. “I’m not sure what I can do that the police haven’t already done, but I suppose I can see what Lauren turns up and go on from there.”

Molly blushed. “I guess Lauren told you I asked her for help, too.”

“Foggy Point is a small town, and the Loose Threads don’t have many secrets from each other.”

“I suppose not.”

“Now, I really do have to go run.”

“I’m sorry I kept you.”

“No problem.”

Molly got back in her rental car and drove away. Harriet looked at the sky and wondered what she’d just gotten herself into.

Harriet couldn’t help but notice that her ten-pound weight loss made running up her hill a lot easier. She wanted to think she could keep it off, but her aunt’s Jekyll-and-Hyde behavior when it came to food would make that difficult. One minute Beth was admonishing her about her gluttonous eating habits and the next was bringing over her latest dessert concoction. She never knew which version of her aunt would walk through the door when they got together.

Her phone interrupted her musings.

“Hello?”

“Can you go with me to a wiener dog race meeting?” asked James. “We could go for coffee and then the meeting. I’d come get you in about an hour.”

Harriet did a quick mental review of her day’s schedule.

“I can do that.”

“See you in an hour.”

She stared at her phone for a minute after the screen went dark. James’s sister was his usual partner in dog racing, but Harriet had subbed for her once before when she’d had to miss a race due to her child’s illness. It was curious he hadn’t mentioned what the problem was. She slid her phone into her pocket and walked the remainder of the way to her house.

Harriet came outside and locked her studio door when James pulled into the driveway.

“Thanks for coming with me on such short notice,” he said as she climbed into the passenger seat.

“Is Maggie sick? Or one of the kids?”

James hesitated before answering then blew out a breath through his teeth.

“Something is going on with her, and I’m not sure what, but it isn’t good. She resigned from Team Cyrano. The whole wiener dog race thing was her idea in the first place. Now she doesn’t want to be away from home—at all.”

“How are things with her husband?”

“She won’t talk to me about him. But then again, she’s always been tight-lipped about her relationships. We’d only met her husband a few times when she announced they were getting married. I see her, and I see my niece, but we never see Dan.” He turned the car on.”Whatever’s going on, the net result is Team Cyrano is down a member.”

Harriet looked at her hands. She had a feeling James wasn’t going to come out and say it, but he was clearly asking her to replace his sister on the race team.

“How much of a time commitment would it be?”

James smiled as he guided his brown BMW SUV toward the Steaming Cup.

“The whole idea of the wiener dog races, besides having fun, is marketing,” he said when they were seated and had their drinks in front of them. “It gives the participants an inexpensive way to promote their businesses. You may have noticed the team shirts all have sponsor names on the back.

“In our case, my restaurant is the sponsor. There are social events before race day, and our Northwest organizing committee is even talking about a sister-city type program between the towns that hold the qualifying races. Today’s meeting is for sponsors and teams to sign up and to discuss the first event. We don’t have to stay for the whole thing.”