Four-Patch of Trouble (10 page)

While I put my camera away, I thanked Stefan for showing me the quilt. "You can put it back in storage now, if you want. I'll have the report ready for Gil as soon as possible, and I'm sure she'll be in touch with you."

Stefan had folded the quilt up almost before I'd stopped talking, grabbed the four corners of the sheet, and scurried into the back room, stumbling a couple times as his pants hems caught on the floor.

Once Stefan was out of sight, Matt asked, "So, what's it worth?"

"I've still got to research the signature to make sure the date's correct."

"Is that the only thing that matters? No points for artistic merit or anything?"

"It starts with the date, but then I factor in the quilt's condition relative to its age, plus the overall design and whether it's got some feature that's rarely seen."

"How does this one rate?"

"Fairly high on all three factors. The age alone makes it fairly rare, the condition is excellent, and the design, while not particularly innovative, is a good example of a traditional design. If I can confirm the name on the quilt as someone who lived here in Danger Cove, that will also increase its value to the museum."

"You didn't ask Stefan what he paid for it."

"That doesn't matter for appraisal purposes. I just need to figure out what a collector might pay for it or what it would cost to buy a comparable quilt if this one were stolen or damaged."

"Replacement cost, you mean." Matt pulled out his notepad, this time taking serious notes. "Like for homeowners' insurance."

"Except there's no way to replace the historic materials for this quilt and make one exactly like it."

"Unless you're Tremain," Matt said. "I wonder what he paid to make his reproductions."

"I have no idea." It was a good question though, one I'd like to know the answer to. Even with modern quilts, I never factored in the cost to make the quilt. The amount that collectors would pay generally had no correlation whatsoever to either the value of the materials or the amount of time that went into the creation.

"Can I help?" Stefan said, returning from the back room. "What is it you have no idea about?"

"How much it would cost to make this quilt today, in new fabrics."

"Oh. Sorry." Stefan stripped off his cotton gloves and held out his hand for the pair he'd loaned to Matt. "I don't know. I only deal in antiques, not new stuff. Dee and Emma could tell you though."

"I'll ask them the next time I see them," I said.

"We could go ask them now." Matt relinquished his gloves. "I can give you a ride over to the school."

"I can't right now. I've got some research to do at the museum. The director is anxious to get my appraisal as soon as possible. Dee and Emma would want me to do that first. I'll try to stop by to see them later."

Matt looked like he was going to press me a little harder but then seemed to think better of it. "I'll tell them you were asking about them," he said on his way out of the gallery.

Stefan sighed. "So much promise, and he let it go. Did you know he used to—"

He was cut off by a customer coming through the gallery door.

"Are you the owner?" The white-bearded man in a striped button-down shirt and suspendered jeans ignored me to focus on Stefan. "I'm looking for the gallery owner. I'm told he might have some hand-carved walking canes."

Stefan looked torn between me and the newcomer.

"I was just leaving anyway," I said. "Go take care of your customer. I'll let you know when the appraisal is complete."

As long as I needed to go to the museum again, I'd stop in to see Gil and get an update on how the board of directors was coping with Tremain's death. My preliminary report on Stefan's four-patch might even distract them from all the recent bad news in the local quilt scene.

The museum was only a couple of blocks away, on the other side of Main Street, so my path took me past Monograms. The police tape was gone, but there was a handwritten sign on the front door indicating the shop was closed due to a personal emergency. It would reopen on Saturday, and the owners apologized for any inconvenience.

I couldn't resist peering through the large display windows to get a glimpse of the quilts inside. Unlike Stefan's windows, these didn't have heavy curtains keeping out the sunshine, and it was possible to look past the window display of monogrammed silver and linens, into the shop itself. Maybe I'd grown used to the dimness of Stefan's gallery, but the interior of Monograms seemed brighter than natural light could account for. I looked up at the ceiling to confirm that the fixtures there were indeed all on.

The shops on this quaint little street weren't like some of the bigger, corporate stores where the lights were left on at all times. The shopkeepers turned them off when they closed for the day, so why were the lights on in Monograms?

I considered calling the police, but I didn't know what I could tell them. That someone had left a light on? Even if it was several lights, wasting electricity was hardly a crime.

I was about to leave when I noticed movement over near the left wall of the shop. The exit door was propped open with a contractor's bucket. What if someone was inside stealing merchandise and taking it out through hallway to the back door? I knew thieves used obituaries to identify residences that would be unoccupied during the funeral services. What if someone had read about Tremain's death and targeted his shop instead of his home?

I felt in my jacket pocket for the cell phone Lindsay had insisted I needed to keep close at hand. Leaving the lights on wasn't a criminal offense, but turning on those lights to steal merchandise was. I hadn't seen anything being removed though, so I hesitated. A moment later, a beefy man wearing a fully loaded carpenter's tool belt appeared in the opening. Rather than taking anything, he simply kicked the bucket aside and pulled the door shut.

It took me a moment to recognize who it was: Tremain's landlord. He must have returned to finish the plumbing work.

Relieved, I dropped my phone back into my pocket and headed for the museum. I hadn't gone far before new suspicions arose. I was assuming the police had prevented the landlord from finishing his work yesterday when they'd secured the scene, but now that I thought about it, I wasn't sure what the landlord had done after the meeting with Tremain had started. I'd seen the landlord go upstairs before the meeting, but I hadn't seen him afterward.

Where had he been when Tremain was killed? It didn't seem likely he'd have left the property already since he'd only just arrived with enough supplies for several hours' work. If he had been still upstairs when Alyse found the body, he had to have heard her scream or the sirens a few minutes later.

So why hadn't he come down to see what had happened? Did the police know he was a potential witness or possibly even a suspect?

I'd forgotten about him when I'd given my statement, but Fred or some of his colleagues must have gone upstairs to secure the scene, and they would have brought the landlord downstairs to talk to the detectives. I ought to make sure the detective knew about the landlord's presence near the crime scene, although he obviously wasn't planning to flee the jurisdiction. Talking to the detective could wait until after I checked to see what the museum had in its collection that might help me place an accurate date on the four-patch.

*   *   *

The museum only displayed a fraction of its collection at any one time and kept the rest in a more light- and temperature-controlled storage area, much like Stefan kept his antique quilts in a dark room. According to the elderly woman at the ticket desk, the records relating to early residents of Danger Cove were in storage, so I needed to get Gil's authorization to view them. Unfortunately, Gil was still meeting with the board of directors and couldn't be interrupted.

I wrote Gil a note, explaining that, as part of the quilt appraisal, I needed to research whether there had been any early residents of Danger Cove with the last name of Dolores.

I couldn't do anything more on the appraisal until I had access to the archives, so I thought I might as well go check on Dee and Emma. I headed back down Main Street to catch a cab to the school. As I approached the Cinnamon Sugar Bakery, Fred Fields came out with a box tucked under his arm and a half-eaten cupcake in his hand. Apparently the carbs hadn't hit his bloodstream yet, because his face was red and sweaty, making it look like he was just a few blood-pressure points away from a stroke. I doubted there were enough cupcakes in the world to soothe whatever was bothering him today.

"You okay, Fred?"

He started guiltily. "I was just picking up dessert for tonight, and, well, you know how it is with Riley's cupcakes. I had to have one."

I was lucky sweets weren't my particular weakness, considering how great the bakery's offerings smelled even from outside. "Looks like you've had a bad day."

He finished the last of the cupcake before answering. "I've had better. Everyone's asking me when Tremain's killer will be arrested, and I don't know what to tell them. I don't think anyone has any idea who did it, and that means they won't be making an arrest any time soon."

"You can't let it get to you like this." I was such a hypocrite. If I could figure out how to separate myself from other people's problems, I wouldn't be passing out at the first whiff of stress. "There must be someone you can talk to at the station to get it off your chest. Someone who's not a suspect."

"You're an officer of the court, right? That makes you a colleague. At least as long as you're not a criminal defense attorney or a plaintiff's counsel claiming we messed up a motor vehicle accident report." Fred popped the bakery box open and grabbed another cupcake. "Besides, you're not a serious suspect. You've been ruled out, at least tentatively. They said the odds were against the killer avoiding at least some blood spatter, and your things were clean. That one bit of blood on your shirt was your own, just like you said."

By unspoken agreement, we both started walking toward his patrol car at the end of the block. I could catch a cab from there, and along the way, I could see what else Fred knew about the murder investigation. "What if I'd wrapped something around me to protect my clothes? Like the quilt at the scene? If it covered Tremain, it ought to cover me too."

"It's possible, I suppose." Fred looked at his hand, as if he'd forgotten inhaling the second cupcake and couldn't understand why it was gone. "Just not likely. They checked with some experts. They'd never had a quilt at a crime scene, but plenty of other makeshift covers have been used by killers to block the spatter, and it hardly ever worked. Most people aren't meticulous enough to cover everything, so there's usually some little patch of blood big enough for the forensics team to find. Usually on the shoes, if nowhere else. Yours were clean. Well, clean of blood anyway. Add that to your lack of credible motive, and you're no longer a person of interest."

"That's a relief." I tried to remember whether Alyse had changed her shoes at the same time she'd changed from a skirt to pants, but I couldn't picture what she'd been wearing in any detail. I'd never thought an interest in fashion might someday help identify a killer, and it was too late now to start paying closer attention to other women's clothes.

Fred pulled out another cupcake. Apparently, the long explanation, coupled with our short stroll to his car, had exhausted him, and he needed refueling.

Perhaps I should tell him about Alyse's change of clothes, so he could pass the information along to the detectives. He could also make sure they knew the landlord had been at the crime scene. Fred probably wasn't supposed to be talking to me about the investigation though, even if I had been cleared. If I wanted the detectives to check out Alyse's wardrobe, I'd have to tell them directly.

Fred finished the third cupcake and leaned against the passenger side of his patrol car to stare longingly at the three remaining ones in the box. "I just hate all this uncertainty. It's not good for people to think someone around here got away with murder."

"I wish I could help, but I'm not a detective. I never would have thought about the killer getting blood on his shoes before the murder. If he did that, wouldn't that make it seem premeditated? If Tremain was killed in a fit of rage, I can see the killer grabbing a convenient quilt on the spur of the moment, but where would he find a convenient pair of galoshes to cover his shoes?"

"We don't know the shoes were covered." Fred gave in to temptation and pulled out another cupcake. "If it was a burglary gone wrong, then the killer might well have bloody shoes. All we know is the people we interviewed at the scene didn't have any blood on them, so all of the focus is on motive right now."

"And Wolfe thinks Dee and Emma have a strong motive."

"Yeah." Fred swallowed half of the latest cupcake. "He's wrong, but I don't like the way he's meddling in the investigation or how long it's taking to identify a credible suspect. Most of the time, the killer's still at or near the scene when he's arrested, and it's pretty obvious who the culprit is. It's been 24 hours now, and the best theory is a burglary gone wrong, but that doesn't give them much to go on."

"So they aren't planning to arrest Dee and Emma simply based on a newbie prosecutor's gut instinct?"

Fred rolled his eyes. "Wolfe is an idiot. No one else thinks Dee and Emma had anything to do with the murder."

"I bet Wolfe hasn't considered just how bad it's going to look for him if he goes after a couple of little old ladies. That's not going to get him the kind of press he's looking for."

"He won't get the conviction he wants either. No jury of Danger Cove residents is going to convict Dee and Emma without a ton of evidence, and so far there isn't any evidence at all."

Fred was probably right, but I was too used to looking for the worst-case scenario to feel completely reassured. "Just being charged with murder would be difficult for them. Stressful and expensive."

"I know." Fred looked inside his bakery box, where only two lonely cupcakes remained. "Bud Ohlsen's getting cranky because of Wolfe's interference in their investigation. If this goes on too long, he might have to arrest someone just to get Wolfe off his back."