Knot in My Backyard (A Quilting Mystery) (13 page)

Uncle Isaac turned to Hilda. “So if someone loaned you money, could you do the same thing?”

“Not really. I used to be a licensed vocational nurse. I lost my license when they convicted me of grand theft.”

Sonia could keep quiet no longer. She asked the question we all wanted to hear. “What happened?”

Hilda took a dainty bite of her kugel and looked at me. “This sure is good.” Then she put her hands in her lap, sat back in her chair, and looked around the table.

“I worked in a nursing home with wealthy patients. We all rotated in and out of the Alzheimer’s ward on a regular basis. They said permanent assignments to the ward were too stressful on the staff. Well, it turns out a man in senior management arranged the schedule that way so none of the staff would notice when expensive jewelry went missing.”

Uncle Isaac asked, “The man stole things from the patients, who trusted him?”

“Once, when he thought nobody was looking, I saw him pocket something, but I didn’t know what really went down until it was too late.”

Sonia leaned toward Hilda. “So then what happened?”

“The family of that patient discovered a three-carat diamond ring missing from her room. I put two and two together and went to the manager’s office. I told him to return the ring or I’d tell the police what I saw. The next thing I knew, the police were searching staff lockers. They found the ring in my locker. I tried to tell them the manager planted it there, but no one believed me. I spent the next five years in prison.” Hilda looked around the table defiantly. “I was innocent!”

Uncle Isaac balled his fists. “A great evil was done to you, sweetheart.
Feh!
”

Then he spat out a curse in Yiddish.
May God bestow on the man everything his heart desires, and may he become a quadriplegic and not even be able to use his tongue!

Sonia asked, “Aren’t there organizations helping women who get out of prison?”

Hilda shook her head slowly. “Only for a short time. Then you’re on your own. You can’t help people find jobs when there’re no jobs to begin with. Anyway, I’m used to street life now. The people call me ‘doc.’ They get hurt or sick, and then they find me. They know I’ll help ’em as much as I can. I even helped birth a baby down in the wash a couple of years ago. Someone called the parameds, but they took twenty minutes to find us. By the time they showed up, it was all over.”

Uncle Isaac’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“A gesind auf deine keppele.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s heaping blessings on your head,” said Crusher.

Uncle Isaac looked at each person sitting around the table: Hilda, Sonia, Crusher, and me. “You’re all in this blanket mitzvah together?”

The four of us nodded.

“Well, I’m so relieved. I don’t feel so guilty now.”

What did my uncle mean? “Guilty about what?”

He grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Well,
faigele.
I know my Martha pretty well. You were acting pretty shifty tonight, so I thought maybe you were up to something crazy again. You know, like the murder you were involved in four months ago. Thank goodness I was wrong.”

Crusher cleared his throat and looked at his plate. Sonia took a sip of water, and Hilda found something interesting to stare at across the room.

Uncle Isaac narrowed his eyes. “I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

“Don’t be silly, Uncle. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

CHAPTER 21

Morty came by after his date to pick up Uncle Isaac. With her bedroll still in the dryer, Hilda spent the night in the guest room.

She helped wash the breakfast dishes while I made her a sandwich-to-go from the leftover brisket and challah. The sack carrying her clean clothes was now fatter with several pieces of Quincy’s old wardrobe. Her clean bedroll was a little brighter with a pretty red-and-yellow tied Windmill quilt; she asked to keep the rose soap.

“Thanks for everything, Wonder Woman. I enjoyed sleeping in a real bed again. That quilt reminds me of one my grandma made that I loved so much. Maybe one day you’ll show me how to make one just like it.”

“I’d love to. Seriously.” I thought about asking Lucy and Birdie to include Hilda in our weekly group. If there was anything a quilter loved, it was teaching someone new how to quilt.

“Your uncle’s such a sweet old man.” Hilda briefly touched my arm. “You’re cut from the same cloth.” She laughed. “Get it? It’s a quilter joke.”

I chuckled. “I get it. And you’re right. He’s special.”

I handed her a piece of paper with my phone number. “Keep this. Call me anytime, for any reason. If you decide you want to get off the streets, I’ll do everything I can to help.” Then I drove her back to Rafi’s place to retrieve her cart.

I arrived at Ed Pappas’s house in just enough time for the ten o’clock meeting with his attorney, Simon Aiken, and Ed’s other biker friends. Ed’s wood-and-chrome dining-room table sat to the right, loaded with refreshments. I poured myself some Starbucks coffee from the disposable carton, but I passed on the apple fritters from Western Donuts.

People were lounging in Ed’s living room to the left, sprawled on his brown leather sofa and matching easy chairs. I sat in one of the empty chrome chairs from the dining room. We had all agreed to meet this morning for a progress report, and I couldn’t wait to tell everyone what I found out from the groundskeeper.

Simon Aiken wore jeans, like everyone else, on this Saturday morning. A new diamond stud sparkled on his earlobe.

Dana Fremont sat next to him on the sofa. Her long brown hair hung in two thick braids and her size-four skinny-legged jeans hugged ankles as slender as my wrists. A big new diamond sparkled on her finger.

Aiken reached over and briefly caressed her forearm.

Ah! Dana doesn’t just work for Aiken; they’re a couple. Have they recently exchanged diamond engagement rings?

Crusher wore a brown bandana on his head this morning. His six-foot-six, three-hundred-pound frame completely filled one of the large leather easy chairs. He stood to offer me the chair. He might’ve been a golem, but he was a golem with manners and “hidden depths,” as he hinted last night. I declined his offer and stayed seated in the smaller chair, where my feet could touch the floor.

Carl, the young biker who helped save Beavers’s wounded dog, waved; a smile creased his handsome face.

Ed Pappas, whose legal defense was the topic of this meeting, sat in the other easy chair, studying his laptop. Ed wore his uniform: a blue-and-white striped tank top showing off his tattoo of the Greek flag, cargo shorts, and a three-day growth of light brown beard.

Aiken cleared his throat. “Okay, everyone’s here, so let’s get started. I’ll go first. I talked to the DA, and she’s convinced she can make a case against Ed based on his threat against Dax Martin and the bloody baseball bat found in Ed’s backyard. Although he hasn’t been arrested and formally charged with the murder yet, we need to be prepared for when she comes after him. She hinted it was only a matter of time.”

Ed’s face paled; the skin around his eyes tightened and his mouth formed a hard line. My pulse quickened at the bad news.

Aiken looked at me. “Martha, I hear you talked to the groundskeeper yesterday. Could he tell you anything about the witnesses Javier and Graciela?”

“He wants to remain anonymous. He’ll lose his job if the school ever finds out he talked to me. Anyway, he knows nothing about the homeless couple, but he did give me a juicy bit of info. He confirmed Dax Martin carried on an affair with the headmaster’s wife, Diane Davis, in the stadium office there.” I pointed through Ed’s sliding glass doors and beyond to the maroon-and-gold building looming like a permanent insult sixty feet away. Dana typed quickly on her iPad.

“He also said he heard Martin and his wife arguing a week before he was killed. Martin’s angry wife informed him she told Jefferson Davis about the affair with Diane.”

Aiken nodded. “That would give Davis a motive to kill Martin. That’s more ammunition to help us establish reasonable doubt in court. Good work, Martha.”

“Thanks. There’s also been a new development since our last meeting.” I told them about the plan to go down in the wildlife reserve on Sunday and distribute quilts and supplies to the homeless. “While we’re down there, we’ll look for Javier and Graciela.”

Dana looked at me and smiled. “Nice idea. Will you be safe?”

Crusher sat forward in his seat. “Now that Switch is gone, I hear things have changed for the better down there. I’m going to help Martha take the stuff in my truck. We need the Valley Eagles to ride in and keep the peace.” Valley Eagles was what these motorcycle buddies called their club—hence the big purple
V E
on the back of their jackets and vests.

“I’m loading the truck tomorrow morning at ten, at Martha’s house. We’ll caravan from there down Burbank Boulevard at around eleven.”

“I’m in,” said Carl and Ed at the same time.

Aiken cracked his knuckles. “Yeah, Dana and I’ll be there.” He turned to Ed. “Anything new?”

“I went to the website for the Army Corps of Engineers. The chain of command is pretty short. Specialist Lawanda Price is the coordinator for the Sepulveda Basin. She’s the one who actually comes to the area and physically supervises the properties for compliance and maintenance—including the parks, wildlife reserve, and ball fields.”

Crusher took a gulp of coffee. “She’s the one who approved the building of the stadium?”

Ed scratched his neck. “No. I think that’s way above her rank and pay grade. She’s basically a low-level field grunt. A couple links up the chain is a civilian, Barbara Hardisty. She’s the real estate assets manager and the one who has broad authority over all the federal real estate in California. This Hardisty woman is likely the one who approved the stadium.”

Aiken narrowed his eyes. “Interesting.”

Ed shifted in his seat. “There’s more. I went fishing around the Beaumont School website to see what I could find out about Martin, the stadium, the athletic program, anything really. I found a roster and photos posted of the students participating in each sport. Guess which sophomore is on the baseball team?”

Everyone looked at Ed.

“A boy named Jason Hardisty.”

Crusher stopped just before he bit into his second fritter. “Any connection to the lady who approved the building of the school’s baseball stadium?”

Ed shrugged. “I don’t know. Beaumont records are confidential. In order to get a list of students and their parents, I’d have to hack into their computer system or break into their offices.”

Aiken stretched his arm out like a traffic cop. “Stop. I’m sure you’re speaking hypothetically, right? You can’t say things like that with other people in the room, even if you’re kidding. Attorney-client privilege extends only to the two of us when we’re alone. If you’re arrested and we have to convince a jury you’re innocent, we don’t want anyone here forced to testify you said anything incriminating.”

Ed looked chagrined. “Okay. Got it.”

Aiken waved his hand. “Anyway, that information is easy enough to get. Every family is listed in the school directory. All we have to do is find a parent with a directory. I know someone at Beaumont who might give me a copy, but they’re out of town until Monday.”

He turned to Dana. “Tell everyone what you discovered about the headmaster and his wife.”

She made a few swipes on her iPad. “I did some cyber sleuthing on each of them. Diane Davis appears to have her own assets. She comes from money. Jefferson Davis reports about half a mil a year from his job and another two hundred thou from a personal holding company called ‘SFV Associates. ’ Probably stands for San Fernando Valley.”

Ed looked at me and back at Dana. “Do we know what his company does?”

“Yeah. SFV Associates incorporated more than two years ago, right before the Beaumont Stadium project began. They just happened to make the winning bid to build the stadium and then subcontracted with Valley Allstar Construction to do the work.”

I spoke up. “Makes sense. As headmaster, Jefferson Davis was in a position to know what the other contractors bid on the stadium. He might even have suggested to them a number to bid on, knowing it would be high. Then his company came in at the last minute with a lower bid, undercut their prices, and got the job. Davis pocketed a percentage and, with the rest of the money, hired a contractor, Valley Allstar, to actually build the stadium.”

Carl still looked lost. “How does this tie in with Martin’s murder?”

I refilled my coffee cup. “Maybe the murder wasn’t about an affair. Martin was closely tied to the stadium project. Maybe he knew from the start, or maybe he found out from Diane Davis, how her husband got the contract. Dax Martin didn’t come from money. He had three kids to support and another on the way. Maybe he saw a way to get more money and tried to blackmail Davis. It’s obvious to me that Davis is a control freak. He’d never stand for anyone having power over him. It’s possible Jefferson Davis killed Martin to shut him up.”

Aiken nodded. “Davis has two reasons for wanting Martin dead—jealousy and money. Of course, at this juncture, this is all speculation, but it’s substantial enough to cause reasonable doubt if the case ever goes to a jury.”

Maybe Beavers might be less angry with me if I could give him this useful information we were uncovering. Maybe he’d see I was right all along about Ed’s innocence. Maybe he’d even forgive me.

“Shouldn’t we give what we have to the police? They might decide to pursue these other leads right now and leave Ed alone,” I suggested.

Aiken shook his head. “Not yet. The police are building their case against Ed, and the DA isn’t in a mood to listen. We’ve got to present them with more than conjecture. We need additional hard evidence. The information against Davis is our ace in the hole, and we’re not going to play that card until it’ll do the most good.”

I was disappointed over losing the opportunity to contact Beavers, but I knew Aiken spoke the truth. Ed’s freedom might depend on a surprise defense.

I asked, “Simon, what happened with your contact in the US Attorney’s Office? Were they able to get the Beaumont documents from the Army Corps of Engineers?”