Four-Patch of Trouble (17 page)

"They were sort of small," Lindsay said. "I don't remember the exact numbers, but there was only one large one, and it was enough that I was sort of surprised the prosecutor didn't investigate it."

"What do we know about that one?"

"Kind of a lot," Lindsay said. "It's the only complaint where the person was willing to go public. I have her name and address if you want to talk to her. Matt's already interviewed her for a story he's working on, and he could probably tell you more."

"I'll call him in the morning. Do you have time to set up an appointment with that victim for me? And text me her name when you get a chance?"

"Sure." Lindsay took out her smartphone and held it up to her face to key in a quick note to herself. "Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of. Unless you want to write my quilt show speech for me."

"No, thanks." Lindsay tucked her phone away and resumed eating.

"Have you thought any more about how you're going to convince Veronica that you're serious about your job?"

"I sort of thought you were going to do that for me," Lindsay said. "When I prove I can do my work perfectly."

"You'll need to do some of the convincing too. You do like your work, don't you?"

Lindsay shrugged. "It's way better than the food service I did before. The hours were terrible, and my schedule got in the way of bell ringing, especially on the weekends. I can practice with handbells anytime, even late at night, but most of the big bell events are on weekends."

Maybe lack of sleep explained her mistakes. "How late do you stay up practicing?"

"It depends. This week I've had lots of time to practice during the day, so I've been going to bed early."

"Maybe you're just tired at the office. Could that be affecting your job performance?"

I reached for Lindsay's empty plate, but she brushed me away. "I've got it." She collected both plates and carried them over to the sink, where she set them down with a frustrated
thunk
. "I'm not tired. I'm just stupid. I make more mistakes than anyone else on the planet."

"You're not stupid." I turned on my stool to face her.

Lindsay leaned against the edge of the sink. "I know. But sometimes everyone treats me like I am. Even you do."

"Me?"

"You keep telling me nothing's wrong with you, but I know there is." She pointed at my blouse. "Why are there bubbles on your shirt? I saw them when you reached for my plate."

I glanced down, and sure enough, there were dried traces of soap bubbles. I must have splashed myself while I'd been preparing the soapy glove missiles. "It's a long story."

"Give me the condensed version."

"I was trying to prevent a mugging."

"You washed a mugger's mouth out with soap?" Lindsay blinked at me but took it completely in stride. She'd heard even stranger things while she worked for me. In fact, her ability to cope with anything I threw at her was one of the reasons why I thought she would make such an excellent paralegal if she ever put her mind to it.

"He wasn't actually a mugger. I just thought he was before he gave me a lecture about meddling with the murder investigation."

"I knew something was wrong," Lindsay said. "But I still don't understand about the soap."

"There are never any convenient weapons in a public restroom. It's too bad too. A Taser dispenser would get a lot more use than the tampon machine."

"You could have called the cops and waited for them." Lindsay's smile faded. "You did have your cell phone with you, right?"

Her anxiety was causing the fear I'd locked away to peer out of its little mental box. I didn't have time to deal with the stress right now. I kept my tone light and said, "It all worked out fine, and I went to the police station afterwards."

"What happened to the mugger?"

"He disappeared before I could threaten him with soap and water," I said lightly. Lindsay didn't need to know just how scared I'd been or that I was on the verge of passing out again. In her own way, she was as much of a worrier as I was. "Some guys will do anything to avoid a bath."

"It's not funny," Lindsay said. "You could have passed out again, and then what would have happened?"

"Forget about the mugger. Wolfe tells me your grandmother's friend has a criminal record."

"It's not as bad as it sounds."

"So you knew?" Exasperated, I asked, "Why didn't you tell me about it?"

"I'm sort of not supposed to know," Lindsay said. "I heard Grandma talking to my mother about it though. It happened before they met. Emma's husband died and left her in pretty desperate financial shape. She was going to lose her home, and there wasn't enough money for anything, and she was overwhelmed. It was stupid, and she knows it, but she stole some cigarettes when she couldn't afford to buy them."

That didn't sound so bad, but I wasn't sure I had the whole story. "Wolfe said there was an assault charge too."

"It was just a charge, not a conviction," Lindsay said heatedly. "Emma sort of bumped into someone when she was running away from the store's security guard. The assault charge was dismissed when she pled guilty to the shoplifting charge. She paid everyone back and did some community service, and she even gave up smoking. She's not some horrible, vicious criminal. She would never hurt anyone on purpose."

"Anything else I should know about Emma? Or your grandmother?"

Lindsay shook her head. "There's no way they'd have done anything to hurt Tremain."

"Except picket his store and threaten to hire a hit man."

"That was a joke," Lindsay said. "You know that."

"I do." But juries didn't always see the humor in death threats. "I'm not the one who matters here."

"Is the prosecutor really going to charge Grandma and Emma with murder?"

"As far as I can tell, he doesn't have any real evidence against them, but a prosecutor can always find something if he looks hard enough."

"What are we going to do about it?"

I was supposed to be avoiding this kind of stress, but I would worry even more if I sat back and let Wolfe bully Dee and Emma into paying for a crime they hadn't committed. "We're going to find out who really killed Tremain."

I didn't make any headway on either my speech or identifying Tremain's killer that night, or even the next morning. I finally gave up and grabbed a yogurt to eat while I checked my e-mail. I learned that Lindsay had arranged a 9:30 appointment with Martha McDowell, the woman who'd told the Better Business Bureau she'd been scammed by Tremain to the tune of about $10,000. The woman hadn't wanted to talk to me initially, but Lindsay had gotten Matt to vouch for me. The end result was that Martha would only talk to me if Matt was also there. I was expecting him to be at my door in fifteen minutes to give me a ride to the meeting.

I jumped up and raced to change out of pajamas. My closet contained nothing but casual clothes that were too old and worn to wear to a business meeting and more of the conservative linen suits I used to wear during trials, where the goal was to keep from wearing anything that might potentially offend a jury member. I had a similar goal now: to reassure Martha that I was professional and nonthreatening so she would be willing to talk to me about Tremain. The pale linen jacket and matching pants ought to do the trick, even if it made me look a bit out of touch with fashion.

I had just finished running a brush through my hair and snagged my messenger bag when there was a knock on the front door. Apparently Matt was right on time.

And then the threatening words from yesterday echoed in my head.
I know where you live. Don't make me visit you again.

I'd convinced my brain that the threat wasn't real, but apparently my adrenal glands hadn't gotten the message. Fighting down the nausea, I pulled back the curtains to make sure it really was Matt on my doorstep. Even with his back turned to me, I recognized him in his black cargo pants and a faded kelly-green sport shirt.

He knocked again.

I threw the strap of the messenger bag over my head and hoped that my nerves would settle down on the drive across town.

Outside, Matt walked with me to the passenger door of a ten-year-old Toyota pickup with mismatched quarter panels. "I always heard that lawyers were rolling in money, but I'd never met one who actually lived in a bank."

It was so tempting to join in with the flirting, but I wasn't convinced he was interested in anything more than a story, so I kept my response short and noncommittal. "Seemed like a good investment."

Once he was behind the wheel and we were on the way out of my driveway, he said, "What did you do with the vault?"

"That's between me and my contractor."

"And the building inspector," Matt said. "I could look it up at town hall, in the applications for building permits."

He just never gave up. I had to admire his persistence and easygoing manner, even if I didn't trust his motives. "I thought you were just an arts reporter, not an investigative journalist."

"You sound like Stefan. He underestimates me all the time."

Was it possible I really had misjudged Matt? Perhaps there was more to him than his appearance and the usual characteristics of someone in his career.

Matt pulled into the parking lot of a sprawling, gray-shingled, two-story building on Cliffside Drive, about halfway between the pier and the lighthouse. It had originally been a sardine cannery but now held a variety of small businesses, including our destination, an insurance agency.

Perhaps I had been assuming the worst about Matt. At the very least, it would be interesting to find out if I'd been wrong and he really was as charming and guileless as he appeared. It was time to find out. "I suppose architecture qualifies as art. If you really want to see the renovations of the bank building, I'll give you a tour. After the quilt show."

He waggled his eyebrows. "Are you inviting me over to see your etchings?"

I wasn't ready for that kind of commitment right now. Not with my health and my career both in an uncertain state. "Whatever I did with the vault, I did not put any etchings into it. Literal or euphemistic."

"Too bad. I like etchings." Matt parked at the far end of the lot outside the McDowell Insurance Agency. "Literal and euphemistic."

*   *   *

Inside the McDowell Insurance Agency, a clerk escorted Matt and me to a back office. A dark-haired, middle-aged woman stood behind the desk. She was wearing a simple pale-pink raw-silk dress and matching short-sleeved jacket, accessorized with trendy understated jewelry that might have come from one of the boutiques near Monograms.

 "I'm Martha McDowell, and you must be Keely Fairchild. Matt has told me all about you."

"He does like to tell stories," I said.

As Martha returned to her seat behind the desk, she gestured toward the leather-upholstered chairs facing her. "I can't get involved in a murder investigation. I didn't mind admitting I was cheated when I thought it might stop Tremain from doing it again, but it's different now. It wouldn't be good for my reputation if people connected me with his murder."

It had to have been difficult for Martha to admit she'd been a victim, and I couldn't see any reason why she'd have made up the story. Too bad no one had listened to her. "For now, I'm just trying to understand how he carried out his scams."

"I still can't believe I fell for his spiel," Martha said. "I'm not some naïve, sheltered person. I started my own business from scratch and built it into a successful company in a highly competitive industry. How could I have been so stupid?"

"We all have blind spots," I said.

"I always tell my clients to get their expensive collections appraised for insurance purposes. If I'd done that before I took possession of the quilt, Tremain wouldn't have been able to cheat me."

"Why didn't you get the appraisal?"

"I don't know," Martha said. "At first, I was just so in love with the quilt that I didn't really care what it was worth. I meant to get the appraisal eventually, but I couldn't find an appraiser I trusted. There were plenty of dealers offering to do it, but they seemed biased. Like they wanted to sell me a 'better' quilt, so they'd downplay mine. I wanted someone independent. It took a few months to stumble across the American Quilters Society and their certification program for appraisers, and then it was easy to find someone to do the job, but it was too late to get my money back."

"What did the appraiser tell you?"

"That it was a fake," Martha said. "And not even a very good one."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not. At least not entirely. It is a beautiful quilt, even if I paid far too much for it." She pointed at the wall behind me. "You can see it for yourself."

I turned around and was startled to see a virtually exact replica of Stefan's four-patch quilt. The only significant differences were the omission of the embroidered signature and the humility block.

"Do you mind if I take a closer look at it?"

She waved her permission, and I stood and approached the quilt. It was definitely a fake. I could tell that much immediately. Tremain hadn't even bothered to make it good enough to pass a quick glance by a qualified appraiser. The overall design and size of the quilt matched Stefan's, but the colors were slightly off, and the style of the prints was much too modern.

I took a closer look and realized that not all of the prints were wrong. One of them was identical to one of the prints I'd seen in both Stefan's quilt and the museum's quilt from the turn of the twentieth century. Finding it in an obviously reproduction quilt made me question my opinion of Stefan's four-patch.

I picked up my messenger bag for my cotton gloves, only to remember I'd tossed them, wet and soapy, into the trash before leaving Monograms yesterday.

"Is there a problem?" Martha said.

"I forgot my gloves. I wanted to touch the fabric but didn't want to risk damaging it with oils from my skin."

"Go ahead," Martha said. "From what the appraiser told me, I think you could probably dunk the quilt into a pot of spaghetti sauce and then pour a gallon of melted chocolate on it without reducing its value."