Tree of Life and Death (19 page)

Stefan followed my gaze. "I bet they'll let
him
leave. Celebrities get special treatment all the time, and it's the schmucks like me and Sunny who get stepped on."

"You know Matt isn't like that," I said. "He certainly didn't try to use his celebrity status to impress me. I didn't even know about it."

"You're right." Stefan watched Sunny iron the first of the blocks that I had delivered, and then he pulled me over to the line of chairs next to the wall. He dropped into one of them. "I didn't mean it. Matt may not care about living up to his potential, but you're right that he also doesn't take unfair advantage. It's just that I'm so worried about Sunny."

I took my time finding a comfortable position in the chair beside Stefan's. I knew better than to promise anyone that there was nothing to worry about. Unexpected and unfair bad things happened all the time. If Alan Miller had told me this morning that he was afraid he might be assaulted on his way out of the building, I'd have automatically reassured him that everything would be fine, the same way I used to calm all my anxious clients on the eve of a trial. I'd have told him that the museum was perfectly safe and nothing bad could possibly happen to him here. And I would have been completely and tragically wrong.

Still, I thought Stefan was worrying excessively. Unless maybe he'd picked up on some reason to be concerned during their official interview. "Did the detective say anything to Sunny during the interview that made her anxious?"

"They wouldn't let me sit with her during the interview," Stefan said angrily. "That's suspicious right there."

"Witnesses are always interviewed separately, so they can't coach each other or be influenced unintentionally. I was just wondering if she said anything to you about…I don't know. Perhaps reading her her rights or asking what she felt were leading and incriminating questions."

"Nothing like that," Stefan said, calmer now. "At least as far as I know. The detective said we couldn't talk about what we said in the interviews with each other, so we didn't. The only thing that worried me—and it wasn't bad enough that I felt I needed to insist on having you there—was that they kept coming back to asking me about the scissors Sunny had contributed to today's event. The detective wanted to know how many there were originally, whether she had any more in her car, that sort of thing."

"I saw Officer Faria collecting them earlier." I'd thought it was just the natural impulse of a patrol cop, nervous about so many potential weapons in a room he was responsible for overseeing. Perhaps there had been more to it.

"That's what I told Ohlsen," Stefan said. "Faria would know better than I would how many scissors there were."

I was confident Ohlsen already knew exactly how many pairs Faria had confiscated. That meant he was trying to figure out if one was missing. And that suggested he thought one had been used as a murder weapon.

Even if that was true, it didn't necessarily make Sunny the prime suspect. Anyone could have grabbed a pair of her scissors today. I'd seen them everywhere this morning, from the cutting tables to the sewing machines and even the ironing boards.

Stefan continued, "I also told him that Sunny would know exactly how many scissors she'd brought, because she's an excellent businesswoman. The only thing she wouldn't be able to account for is how many pairs might have been taken home, the same way people absently put a borrowed pen in their pocket. It happens during the shop's classes occasionally, and usually the scissors get returned as soon as the person realizes what she did. It's hardly ever intentional, and I wouldn't expect anyone here would have taken a pair on purpose. I mean, they're all volunteering their time to help out the museum. They're good people, not criminals."

"Good people commit crimes of passion." Still, I hoped Stefan was right, even as I was becoming more and more convinced that the killer was one of the people in this room. If Sunny's scissors really were the murder weapon, that certainly increased the odds that someone here had done it. The only other plausible explanation was that Alan had stolen one of the scissors, perhaps as a gift for his grandmother, and then the killer had taken them from him. Unfortunately, that could still have implicated a quilter. Sunny might have seen him with the scissors and confronted him about the theft. It was easier to imagine Jayne in a self-righteous fury, reclaiming the stolen scissors and provoking Alan into violence and then killing him with the weapon that was so conveniently right at hand.

"You need to relax," I said. "Your anxiety will only make Sunny more nervous, and then the police will start to wonder what she's so worried about."

"I can't relax," Stefan said. "I keep thinking about how the very same detective who's in charge of this case arrested the wrong person a few months ago. She hadn't done anything. They still arrested her."

"Ohlsen had been wrong then, but he wasn't entirely irrational. His suspect did have the means, motive, and opportunity to kill Randall Tremain." I wanted to say that wasn't true of Sunny, but unfortunately, I couldn't. Not honestly. Sunny did have means, motive, and opportunity in this case. She was used to working with sharp instruments, probably not just quilting tools but also medical devices, and could well have had a pair of her own custom-made scissors close at hand. She had a reason to be afraid of Alan Miller, which could lead to violence as a preemptive form of self-defense. And, since she had found the freshly dead body, it wasn't too much of a stretch to conclude she had also had the opportunity to kill him. Stefan didn't need to hear that line of reasoning though. "Anyone can make a mistake. I think Ohlsen learned from it, and this time there's no one pressuring him into making a hasty arrest."

"Are you sure?" Stefan asked

"As much as I can be while I'm stuck in here with all the rest of the witnesses," I said.

Sunny handed off a stack of ironed blocks to Trudy and came over to get Stefan. "Your turn," she told him, tugging him out of his chair and taking his place in it. "I need a break."

She watched him shuffle over to the ironing board, his pants hems dragging on the wood floor. She waited until he took up the iron to work on the latest pile of blocks that Trudy had delivered, and then she turned to me. "Do you know if they found the murder weapon?"

"Not as far as I know," I said. "I'm guessing it was one of your scissors."

She nodded. "I think so too. It was certainly something sharper than the bag of batting scraps that I was carrying." She looked relieved to be able to talk about the experience openly. Maintaining an upbeat facade for Stefan had to be draining. At least, that had been my experience while keeping my clients' spirits up over the long months of discovery leading up to the trial. My doctor had told me that the years of doing that for my clients could have contributed to my current tendency to pass out.

"If Alan was stabbed," I said, "shouldn't that exonerate you? If you'd done it, wouldn't you have been covered with blood?"

Sunny looked a little faint, reminding me that she'd gone into shock earlier from the sight of Alan's blood.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I forgot about your phobia."

"It's all right," Sunny said. "I'm not usually such a wimp that I can't even talk about blood. Back in school, I was fascinated by it. I read about it, listened to lectures about it, and wrote about it in exams. I was even okay with it in test tubes and under a microscope. It was a big surprise when I passed out the first time I saw it coming out of a real live person. I thought I'd get over it with practice, but it got worse instead of better."

I knew the feeling. I'd once thought I could control my syncope events with willpower. Instead, the stress of trying to avoid them only increased the likelihood that I'd lose consciousness. "Shock isn't something you can control. You did everything you could this morning by calling for help."

"I know, but I wish I could have done something for the young man. I'm pretty sure it was too late by the time I found him, but if I'd gotten any closer, I would have passed out, and that wouldn't have helped anyone."

"It might have given you an odd sort of alibi though. A person who passes out at the sight of blood isn't likely to stab anyone, or do anything that would risk getting blood on herself. Assuming, of course, that the killer was likely to get spattered."

"It's hard to tell how much blood the killer was exposed to. I'm pretty sure he'd have gotten some on his clothes, but it might not have been a huge amount. It depends on the cutting instrument and the angle of the cut." Sunny hugged her ribs and closed her eyes for a moment. "Maybe I'm not as good at talking about a real person's blood as I am with theoretical blood."

"I understand," I said. "I was just curious."

"I'm okay." Sunny opened her eyes again but continued to hold onto her ribs. "I wish I could be more helpful. All I remember is seeing the blood around his waist, soaking his shirt. I couldn't even tell you how many wounds there were or how long he'd been dead, let alone how much spatter there was."

"Can I ask one more bloody question?"

"Sure," she said gamely.

"Alan's quilt seems to be missing," I said. "What if it was between him and the killer when he was stabbed? Would it have absorbed all the blood?"

"The Tree of Life quilt? That would be such a shame, compounding the tragedy. Stefan pointed the quilt out to me when you were appraising it. Despite the wear and tear, it was lovely." Sunny shuddered. "The thing is, blood isn't just a wet puddle. It's got some pressure behind it. And it's sticky. It almost acts like a magnet, attracted to everything. I used to think that it was practically alive with a consciousness that made it seek me out, aware that I was so freaked out by it. Now all I can picture is the quilt's green trees on a blood-red background. I don't care how well it's cleaned. I'd never be able to look at it again if that's what happened to it."

"It's just speculation on my part," I said. "I'd like to believe Detective Ohlsen will be able to identify the killer by finding traces of blood on him even if the quilt absorbed most of the evidence."

Sunny brightened. "You're right. Even with the quilt, I'd expect there to be at least a little blood on the killer somewhere. Certainly on the hands. Unless he stabbed Alan through the quilt. All the police have to do is inspect us all for blood spatter, and they'll know I didn't do it."

I doubted it would be that simple, but there was no point in worrying Sunny. Stefan was already worried enough for both of them.

Sunny and I returned to the ironing board where Stefan was working.

"What's he doing here?" Stefan said, nodding at the doorway where Faria had just returned to the boardroom with Matt. Faria had already managed to irritate the easygoing Fred Fields, who pulled the pink-and-brown Cinnamon Sugar Bakery bag out of his pocket, peeked inside it to make sure it was empty, and then stalked over to the trash can next to the conference table to throw it out. "I don't trust the rookie."

I didn't either, but Faria was still a cop, and antagonizing anyone who had the power to make an arrest was foolish. It was an even worse idea in the midst of a murder investigation.

Faria caught sight of me and gestured for me to come over to the doorway.

"I'd better go see what he wants." I gathered up the handful of finished blocks from the end of the ironing board. "I'll drop these off on my way."

Faria waited impatiently while I left the blocks at the appropriate station for layering and basting. He was bouncing on his feet when I finally got to him. "Ohlsen sent me to get you. He needs an expert opinion on something he found, and he seems to think that's you."

Perhaps they'd found the Tree of Life Quilt. "What is it?"

"He wouldn't tell me. He didn't want you to be biased by my description, I guess."

More likely, I thought as I followed him into the hallway and down the back stairs, it was because they considered him as useless at a crime scene as I was at sewing. Despite his uniform, Faria was as much of a lowly gopher as I was today.

Detective Ohlsen was waiting for me just outside the back door. He was holding an evidence bag with a pair of scissors in it. He raised the bag to my eye level and demanded, "Recognize this?"

"They're scissors." The murder weapon, presumably. There were traces of what might otherwise have been rust, except that it was obvious the scissors were new and barely used. It was fortunate Sunny hadn't been asked to identify them. "I assume you know that though. More technically, they're eight-inch dressmaker's shears."

"Notice anything unusual about them?" he said.

"Not really. I'm an appraiser, not a quilter. All I can really tell you about scissors is that quilters use them, and they come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Individual quilters may prefer one size or style over others, but they're not as customized as the leather thimble you found earlier."

"This one is," Detective Ohlsen said. "It's engraved with
Sunny Patches
. Does that mean anything to you?"

My stomach churned. Maybe Stefan hadn't been worrying needlessly. I'd been right to guess that Alan had been stabbed with one of Sunny's scissors, and now it looked like they'd found the actual pair that had killed him. If so, the police now had something that might connect Sunny with the crime, not just with finding the body. "Sunny Kunik owns a quilt shop known as Sunny Patches."

"I know that much." Detective Ohlsen stared at the bag for several moments before saying, "I'm wondering how these scissors got tossed into the trash container."

"Sunny provided a lot of the supplies and tools for the ornament-making event in the museum today. She brought at least a dozen pairs of those scissors. I saw them all over the place in the boardroom. Anyone could have picked up one of them and carried it out here."

He grunted and stared at the evidence bag for long moments. Eventually, he looked up again and seemed surprised that I was still there. "It's a start, anyway. There might be prints on the scissors. And it means we were wrong about thinking he was killed by one of his buddies. Everyone in the boardroom is a suspect now."