Knot in My Backyard (A Quilting Mystery) (21 page)

I nodded.

“Good. Hopefully, they saw enough to rule out Ed as the killer. If they do rule him out, we should be able to get him back home tomorrow.”

Ed reached in his pocket for his house key, which he placed on my coffee table next to his computer and his gun. “Hold on to these for me?”

“Of course.” A lump filled my throat.

Aiken clapped a hand on Ed’s shoulder. “You ready, dude?”

Ed nodded.

“Then let’s do this.”

I rushed to Ed and threw my arms around him. “Don’t worry. I’m going to do everything I can to help get you out of this. Detective Beavers doesn’t think you’re guilty either. He’ll find the real killer.”

Ed Pappas held on to the hug for a long time. He whispered into my ear, “You’re my Jewish mom, Martha.” Then he kissed my cheek and looked at Crusher. “Take care of her, bro.”

Crusher nodded and they did that dancing-hand thing guys do.

Ed squared his shoulders. “I’m ready, man.”

Twenty minutes after they left, the doorbell rang. Detective Kaplan and the four uniforms behind him accounted for five firearms in five hands. He flashed a warrant. “I know he’s here, Ms. Rose. Step aside so we can bring him in.” Clearly, no one thought to tell Kaplan that Ed was turning himself in to the police at six.

I stepped back in disbelief and did as I was told. When Kaplan saw Crusher, he barked, “Hands on your head, Levy!” Insidious fingers of a migraine slowly squeezed my forehead. Could this day get any worse?

Crusher looked at me, rolled his eyes, and complied. He’d discreetly slipped Ed’s gun out of sight. One of the uniforms trained his gun on us while the others rushed through my house and searched every room.

I heard them, one by one, yelling, “Clear.”

Kaplan reappeared with a scowl on his face, demanding, “Where’d he go?”

“You must have missed the memo, Detective. Ed Pappas just turned himself in to the police with his attorney. If you want to find him, you’ll have to go back to the station.”

Kaplan’s face turned red and he pulled out his cell phone. After a brief conversation, he said to the uniforms, “Pappas is in custody.”

As they walked out the front door, I said to Kaplan, “How’s your mother?”

He slammed the door and my head started pounding.

Crusher took Ed’s gun out of the computer case. “Technically, as an ex-con, I’m not allowed to touch this.” He picked up the gun, made sure a round was chambered, and slipped it back into the computer case.

I rubbed my forehead and went straight for my meds, washing them down with a glass of water from the faucet in the kitchen.

Crusher looked at the brown plastic prescription bottle in my hand. “What’re those for?”

“Headache. Bad.”

He stepped close to me and gently kneaded my neck and shoulders. I slumped into the comfort of his large hands working the hard knots in my muscles. In his deep voice, he quietly murmured, “You’ve had a bad day, babe. I could make it a lot better.”

I looked at him. A picture of Kerry Andreason in a hot-pink minidress shaking her tail flashed through my mind, and I was tempted, but not for long. I said the first thing I thought that might discourage Crusher. “I’m in love with Arlo Beavers.”

Crusher was nobody’s fool. He must have sensed my relationship with Beavers had completely tanked. He brushed back one of my curls and his eyes searched my face. “How’s that working out for you?”

It wasn’t working out, of course, and we both knew it. Arlo laughed at me yesterday and then kissed that flirty blonde, Kerry Andreason. Later in the day, when I said the L-word, he told me we needed to talk about it. He probably wanted to tell me it was too late. Then this afternoon, he didn’t even mention talking at all. He just told me to go to Lucy’s house if I thought I was in danger. I turned away—anger and hurt burning in my cheeks.

“You need to get some rest, babe. Go lie down. I’ll wake you when it’s time to go. No one can hurt you while I’m here.”

The rumble of his voice was surprisingly reassuring. I walked to my bedroom and climbed under my Ohio Star quilt; Bumper joined me on top of the bed. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to oblivion.

Two hours later, someone gently rubbed my back and shoulders, waking me from a deep sleep. Crusher sat on the side of my bed, causing me to roll toward the big dent he made in the mattress. “It’s eight-thirty, babe. How’s your headache?”

I opened my eyes and smiled. “Gone. Thanks, Yossi.” I gestured toward the door. “Just give me a couple of minutes.”

“Dang. Our first time in bed together and it was so brief.”

I got up, splashed cold water on my face, and eventually made my way to the living room, where he waited.

Crusher tucked Ed’s gun inside his leather vest and made sure no one lurked outside the house. Then he hurried me into his truck and we took off for Van Nuys.

We arrived at the church five minutes early. Pastor Sandoval waited inside. He looked at Crusher and stood. “Mrs. Rose, I asked you to come alone.”

“I’m sorry, Pastor Sandoval, but I’ve been threatened too. This is Yossi Levy. He’s my friend and bodyguard. He was the one who drove supplies to the homeless on Sunday.”

Sandoval relaxed and offered his hand. “They told me
‘un gigante rojo’
came to give them blankets, but I thought they were exaggerating. Now I’m looking at the red giant with my own eyes.”

I looked around in panic when I realized the three of us were alone. “Where are all the people? Are we too late?”

“No. I managed to find temporary shelter for most of the homeless with church families or in shelters. The Acevedos are still in the safe house. I’m going to drive you to where they’re staying.”

Crusher stepped forward. “I’ll drive my car. We’ll follow you.”

Sandoval pressed his lips together. “You said someone might be after you. If they followed you here, they’ll follow you to the safe house. I can’t let that happen. There’s a back entrance to this building. We’ll slip out the door and walk to the next street, where my car is waiting.”

Crusher nodded and pulled out the gun as we followed Pastor Sandoval out the back door into a dark alley. We ducked between two apartment buildings, weaving our way through a line of foul-smelling plastic garbage cans to the street beyond. A dark blue Chevy sedan was parked at the curb. Crusher sat up front with Sandoval and hid the gun again. We drove two blocks down the street with the headlights off and turned north. Just before we merged into the cross traffic on Sherman Way, Sandoval turned on the lights.

He drove evasively, with one eye in the rearview mirror. We turned up and down streets, doubled back, then ended up at a small house on Saticoy Street, near White Oak Avenue.

Crusher put his hand on Sandoval’s shoulder. “You handled that like a pro. Where’d you learn those tactics?”

Sandoval smiled. “We’re only a small stopover in an underground railroad, Mr. Levy. With the help of God, we save innocent lives.”

A minute later we were in the tiny living room of a California bungalow built in the 1940s. A striped Mexican blanket hung over the back of the old blue sofa, and every flat surface in the room was covered with school pictures of four children progressing through the years. The remnants of a spicy dinner remained in the air, and my stomach juices churned in hunger.

Sandoval shook hands with a man I recognized as the one who gave up his seat for me on Sunday afternoon. The wife’s long black hair was pinned back into a bun and she wore an apron with a bib over a simple flowered housedress. The man turned to his wife and nodded. “
Bueno,
Ana.”

Ana disappeared down a narrow hallway and came back followed cautiously by a young man and woman: Javier and Graciela Acevedo. At last I’d found the people who witnessed Dax Martin’s murder. People who could clear Ed Pappas.

They were small in stature, with the distinctive nut-colored skin of the
Indio.
Javier was about twenty years old, and I guessed Graciela was still in her teens. She looked to be about six months pregnant. When they saw Crusher, they instinctively clung to each other, glancing frequently at Pastor Sandoval for reassurance. Crusher took one step back in a gesture of peace.

I asked Sandoval if they knew why we were here, and he said they did. I pulled out my cell phone. “I want to record what they say. Is it okay?”

He conferred with the couple, turned back to me, and nodded. “They don’t want you to take their pictures. Just ask your questions and I’ll translate.”

“Buenas noches.”
I smiled. “You know why I’m here. All I need to know from you is, did you see the murder of the man across the river from your camp?”

Sandoval spoke in Spanish and then turned back to me. “They did see the murder. They are very upset and afraid.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“They said two men walked in back of the ball field to the river’s edge. At first, they seemed to be friendly, and the victim laughed. Then suddenly the killer pulled out a baseball bat he carried behind him and hit the second one in the head. The man went down and the killer hit him a few more times.”

“Can they describe the killer?”

“They were too far away to get a look at his face in the dark. Plus, he wore a baseball cap.”

I pressed a button on my cell phone and pulled up Ed’s picture. “Is this the man you saw?”

Javier and Graciela studied the picture for a long time. Finally they shook their heads and shrugged.

“They can’t tell for sure, because of the darkness. It could have been him.”

Could have been him?

“Can they remember any details about him? Color of hair, build, how tall?”

“They say he was as tall as the victim and thought he had light hair under the baseball cap. The night was cool and he wore a sweatshirt, but they could see he was slim.”

Crap! This doesn’t look good for Ed.

Both he and Dax Martin were around six feet tall. Ed was slim and his hair was light brown. Their testimony wouldn’t help. In fact, it would only make Ed look
more
guilty.

“Is there anything else they can tell me? Anything at all they might have noticed?”

Both Javier and Graciela thought for a moment. Finally Graciela spoke.

Sandoval looked at me. “She thinks the man in the cap had a funny voice.”

“Can she be more specific?”

Graciela just shrugged again and I knew I had gotten all the information they possessed.

Okay. Maybe Ed resembled the killer, but so did thousands of men. Plus, Ed’s voice was normal, which ruled him out as far as I was concerned. Was Martin killed by an angry school parent because his kid didn’t have enough time on the field? If so, that would give a whole new meaning to the word
hardball.

What about Jefferson Davis? I’d never actually seen him. Was he tall? Slim? Did he have gray hair? Gray hair would look light under a baseball cap. Time to get a good look at the headmaster of Beaumont.

I thanked the couple for the information and wished them Godspeed.

Sandoval drove us back to the truck. “Did you get what you needed?”

“Yes and no, Pastor. I know my friend didn’t commit this murder, but except for the voice thing, he fits their description of the killer. The good thing is, we now have more details than we had before.”

Back at the church, we thanked him for his help. As we walked toward Crusher’s truck, he called after us,
“Diós guarde.”

On the drive home, I suddenly remembered what the groundskeeper had said. Dax Martin had argued with one of the parents who wore a baseball cap and had a stutter. Was that what Graciela meant by a “funny voice”? It was too late to ask her.

We stopped at a drive-through and brought our dinner home. Crusher unwrapped the food at the kitchen table while I set up my laptop and pulled up the Beaumont School website. A smiling head shot of a handsome, older man displayed. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell how tall Jefferson Davis was, but his silver hair did qualify him as a suspect. I showed the picture to Crusher and closed the computer. “I’m starving.”

I attacked my burger with enthusiasm. Crusher looked up from his second double-double. “I’m spending part of the night with you.”

I remembered his offer to “make it better” from earlier in the evening. No way was I going to let anything happen between us. “What do you have in mind, exactly?”

He raised one eyebrow. “I’m your bodyguard, babe. Remember? I’ll camp out on the sofa until the next guy comes to relieve me at two in the morning.”

Heat warmed my cheeks and I ducked my head so, hopefully, he wouldn’t see my embarrassment. “Let me get you a pillow and bedding.”

“I won’t be needing those. I plan to stay awake and alert. You, however, should go to sleep. Go on. You’ll be safe with me.”

I looked up at the gentle giant before me with—what had he said on Shabbat?—hidden depths. What did I actually know about him? Nothing. Yet I knew I could trust him.

“Good night, Yossi.” I turned and walked down the hall.

How did this happen? I’d lived alone successfully for years, happily doing without any man in my life. Now there were two. The one I thought I loved made me very sad, because I was sure I’d lost him; while the other kept reminding me he was more than willing to step in the breach.

Heaven help me, what was I going to do? Thank goodness tomorrow was quilty Tuesday. I hoped Lucy and Birdie would help me figure things out.

CHAPTER 32

When I woke at eight, Carl was sitting in my kitchen. “The guy who was supposed to take over from Crusher last night couldn’t make it, so the big dude crashed on your sofa. He filled me in on everything when I got here at six.”

“Want a cheese-and-egg-white omelet?”

“Cool. Very healthy.”

I grated cheese and chopped onions, mushrooms, green peppers, and tomatoes. Twenty minutes later, I topped two steaming hot omelets with slices of fresh avocado and salsa and served them with buttered toast and coffee.

So much work and the food was gone in thirty seconds. That’s why I hated to cook.