“Grandpa’s going to go on oxygen. The doctor thinks that could help a lot of his symptoms.”
“I’m glad to hear that. He’s always been one of my favorite people. It was hard to see him growing so very old so fast.” She lifted an eyebrow.
“I’m not ready to kick him out of his home.” Taylor sipped her lemonade. It was sweet and tart. It refreshed and made things clearer in her mind. “I don’t know if I could anyway. I don’t have any kind of legal guardianship of him. But I can get a day nurse, or whatever they’re called.”
“That’s awfully expensive, Taylor.” Grandma turned back to Grandpa for a moment. “Don’t forget over there by the dogwood!”
He waved acknowledgment of her directions.
“The finances are complicated, I’ll admit it. But there’s enough money. Especially if it is only part time.”
“Good.”
Taylor was relieved Grandma Quinny didn’t question her too closely. “You wouldn’t happen to know where to start looking for someone, would you?”
Grandma Quinny’s eyes lit up. “You know, your cousin Ellery really enjoyed herself the night she stayed with him. And she is a certified nursing assistant.”
“But doesn’t she have a job?” Taylor dragged her finger across the beads of condensation on her glass.
“She’s been trying to get into nursing school but has to get her math scores up first. She could use a job that left room for night classes.” Grandma Quinny said it without judgment. Taylor wondered if Ellery was the current favorite, or if Grandma Quinny was just giving her a good sales pitch. She didn’t have to though, Taylor liked Ellery. A kind, strong girl about four years older than Belle. The kind of girl you’d trust with your aging grandparent.
“I’ll call her. She could be a real help to me.”
“If you have plenty of money, you need more help at the store too. But I think you know that.”
“I dream of the day I can sit with the books and make a full-fledged business plan. I don’t know that Mom ever had one, and the business has changed an awful lot in the last decade.”
“You should get Reid to come and fix up your website.”
Grandma Quinny was speaking of the cousin who had been at the house playing cards the other day. Taylor laughed. “I’m sure what he really wants to do is make a flashy site for a quilt shop.”
“You’re family. He’d help you.”
“Another thing to add to the list.”
“Every life has a list, Taylor.” Grandma Quinny held her hand to her eyes like a visor to get a better look at Grandpa. “Your list is quite long right now, but you don’t have to do it all alone. We’re here for you.”
Taylor set her lemonade on the table, glad that there was one or two people out there who she could lean on, when everyone else was leaning on her.
* * *
Taylor was at the school at 2:55 ready to pick up Belle.
Belle agreed to get in the car, but as she said, it was only for Grandpa’s sake. As they drove to the hospital, Taylor caught Belle up on what happened the night before.
Belle stared at her feet in silence. She wasn’t wearing Taylor’s vintage Doc Martens. Just a pair of black and white Vans.
Taylor parked, slamming her brakes.
Belle sighed, a sound that got more annoying every day that passed. “We need to talk to Gina.”
“We need to go in and see about Grandpa and his oxygen levels.”
“Gina knows something. She came to see you to find out if her mom told you the ‘thing’. Then Nancy came back to see if Gina told you the ‘thing’. Of the two, Gina is clearly the one who would be easiest to crack.” Belle glanced at her phone. “We’re what, two hours from Troutdale because of traffic?”
“Yeah…”
Belle ground her teeth and scrunched her mouth. “I guess we can call and see if we can lure her down here.”
“Nancy would have called Gina from jail, right? So it’s not like she’s going to answer a phone call from one of us.”
“Which is why storming her gates would be better.” Belle’s eyes were narrowed, her face flexed with intensity.
“Doesn’t it seem like Gina would be here, with her mom?” Taylor drummed her fingers on her steering wheel. “I feel like she’d have come down here to make bail, at least.”
“Then we’re back to calling.” Belle tapped around on her phone for a while, then held it to her ear. She waited but ended the call in frustration. “No voicemail.”
“How did you get that number?”
“Research. It’s not hard. I guess we go in and talk to Gramps, but we’re not done with this. Nancy tried to kill you, Taylor. That’s big.”
Taylor unbuckled and popped her door open. She didn’t like the tone Belle was taking, like she was the adult and Taylor was the foolish kid messing around with something serious and beyond her scope. “I know.”
They headed into the hospital more demoralized than she had thought possible. When they got to Grandpa Ernie’s room he was arguing with the nurse. “No one sleeps well at a hospital at night.”
The nurse smiled at him, but her eyes were hard. “Your oxygen has been great all day.”
“Sure, they’re pumping me full of it, like I’m some old sick guy who can’t breathe.”
The nurse lifted an eyebrow at him, then turned to the girls. “Here to see Ernie? He’s full of beans today.”
“I’m hardly full of anything. They feed me terrible.” He looked wonderful, all things considered. The hospital gown with its light blue pattern on white background wasn’t the most stylish piece of clothing the old tailor had ever worn, but he had color in his cheeks and a twinkle in his eye. His hair was mussed though, and Taylor wanted to find a comb to fix it.
“Has the doctor been in recently?” Taylor sat in the visitor’s chair.
Belle took a rolling stool and pulled it up to him. “Bad night?”
“Terrible. Let’s get out of here and get some burgers.”
“Can’t. I have some homework to make up. I got a little behind on a project.”
Taylor’s mom-stand-in antennae tingled. “Did you get to talk to your advisor?”
“Yeah. They’re bending the rules for me. Just this time. Just because Mom is dead. They accepted that I would never have missed an appointment if Mom hadn’t died, and even acknowledged that intellectual theft is real theft.”
“Are they going to do anything about the girl steeling your project?”
“Nope. While they acknowledged it was real theft, they didn’t care.”
Grandpa Ernie coughed. “Idiots. We’ll see what they say after I’m done talking to them.”
Belle reached for his hand and held it. “Thanks Gramps, it’s nice knowing you have my back.”
“Grandpa, I have an errand to run, can I leave Belle with you?”
Belle shot her a look of great frustration.
“No, you can’t. I’m exhausted and can’t babysit.” He huffed into his mustache.
“Okay then. I hate to leave you like this, but we do have to run.” Taylor kissed his cheek and left.
A bug had bit her when Belle mentioned intellectual property theft, and more than ever, she needed to talk to Gina.
Belle was on her heels, and they were back at the car in seconds. “Call Gina. Keep calling her, and texting. She’s got to pick up eventually.”
While she was giving instructions, her own phone rang.
Maddie.
Taylor stared at her name on the screen. She gave in and answered—using the blue tooth built into her mom’s car. “Yes?”
“We need to start over.” Maddie sounded sad. “An important part of being a counselor is seeking regular counseling, and I really do now see how I screwed up. I messed up helping Belle in a few different ways.”
“Can we talk later?” Taylor was about five short minutes from the sheriff’s office and all she wanted to do was get there.
“We can, but if I could just sa
y one more thing I need to confess.”
“Make it quick.”
“I wanted to publish an article about our experimental treatment. I was using Belle’s grief for my gain and I am so sincerely sorry.”
Taylor held her tongue. She had words for Maddie, and questions for her, but this was not the time. “Okay. I hear you. We’ll talk later.”
“Just….”
“No, not ‘just’ anything. Seriously Maddie, this is not your issue or your concern. I need to run.”
“Okay. Later then.”
Taylor ended the call and snarled at the phone.
“Still no answer.” Belle had been steadily trying to get in touch with Gina.
“That’s okay. We’re here already.” Taylor pulled into the parking lot at the sheriff’s office. “You know how the teachers didn’t really care that the student stole your project?”
“Yes, I am painfully aware of that.”
“Well, I care. I care so much I want to go punch the teachers.”
“Hmm. Interesting.”
“Because you don’t want to punch them, right? I’m way angrier than you are.”
“I wouldn’t say angrier….”
“I would. Punching is very much angrier than not punching.”
“Fine.” Belle poked at her phone.
“Similarly, Nancy was far angrier than Gina was over that thing with Mom’s quilt. I think Nancy was so angry that she got physical with Mom and caused her death. Probably manslaughter and not murder, but still.”
“And that’s what Gina knows, isn’t it?” Belle was quick to pick up the trail Taylor was going down.
“Yes, that’s what she knows.”
Taylor had her hopes pinned on talking to Nancy one more time. She didn’t know if they’d let her, but if she had the chance, she just knew she could egg her into some kind of dramatic confession. Especially if she played it like Father Brown and implied Nancy would get a much easier sentence if she admitted the fight she had engaged in with her mom.
But as she walked toward the building, a weeping Gina Croyden was walking out.
Belle and Taylor moved as a unit, flanking her.
“She wasn’t there, was she?” Taylor asked, not giving any kind of room for subtlety. “When you went to check in on Nancy the night my mom died. Did you wait up for her till she got back? Or did you just go to sleep?”
Gina tried to push away, but she was a shaking, confused mess.
It was easy to guide her to a bench. “The next morning, when Mom was found, did you realize where your own mother had been? When you were talking to the police did you tell them what you suspected?”
“Mom could have been in the bathroom.” Gina’s words were shaky whispers. “She might have been in the bathroom. I told them I said good night to her. I did. She wasn’t in bed, so I said goodnight anyway, because she was probably in the bathroom.”
“What did your mother say when you asked her where she had been?” Taylor kept probing.
“Nothing, she said to forget it. She said whatever happened wasn’t our problem.”
“But you know your mom.” Taylor was talking too fast, too aggressively. She needed to cool it down, find a way to make Gina feel safe. “Come inside, let’s sit down.”
Gina froze.
“Let’s go back inside, you need to talk to the deputy.”
“She might have just been in the bathroom,” Gina’s voice was a whisper.
“She was really mad about the quilt pattern though, wasn’t she?” Taylor matched her whisper and held the door open.
Gina nodded.
“You forgave my mom, but Nancy didn’t.”
Gina nodded again.
Beside her, Belle was also agitated. She held her hand out to stop Taylor. “Gina, I’m sorry. This must be an awful kind of revelation.”
“Nothing has been this bad since Brick passed…” Gina held her hand to her eyes as her shoulders shook with body wracking sobs.
“What happened to your brother?” Belle asked.
Taylor shuddered, remembering Belle did not know she was asking about her own biological father.
“It was a fight—they said it was a fight. He was stabbed in an alley not far from Mom’s house. He had been robbed.”
“No drugs on him?”
“Plenty in his system. He’d promised Mom he would stay sober.”
“Oh crap.” It was an unsatisfying oath, but the picture came to Taylor so clearly that the words just escaped. “Your Mom was really mad about it, wasn’t she?”
“If he had just stayed clean.” Gina took one last wracking breath, and then her sobbing stopped. She found a seat in the waiting room and sunk into it.
“What made you think it was your mom?”
Gina looked up at Taylor, her eyes terrified. “It was her knife. I’d know it anywhere. The one she used to clean fish when we were camping as kids. Just a knife, and yet, the handle was this worn, red plastic. So familiar. How could he let someone kill him with a knife like that, if it was really a fight? He’d have snapped the handle. But if it was his own mom, and he didn’t see it coming.? Didn’t think she’d stab him?”
Belle leapt to her feet and began pacing. “They probably said he was high and that’s why someone with a weak knife like that was able to kill him.”
Gina nodded. “Just pot though. He was trying to stay clean. But it was enough for her. He’d promised Mom he’d stay off everything.”
Belle raked her hand through her hair. “And then she got mad at Mom...” She caught Taylor’s eye, and Taylor nodded. “And she tried to kill you, Taylor. Gina, you have got to go tell them what you know. Please. She’s got to get off the streets. She will get mad again. You know that, right?”
Gina glanced at her forearm where Taylor saw the scar again. The jagged, round wound like a stab wound. Gina pushed her sweater sleeve over it.
“Come with us, please. If she’s sick, she can get help in the system, somehow, and then she won’t hurt anyone ever again.”
Gina stood and they walked in together, but the deputy spoke with her alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
On Gina Croyden’s testimony, Nancy Reese was held without bail on charges of the attempted murder of Taylor Quinn, while investigations were opened into the deaths of Richard “Brick” O’Doyle, and Laura Quinn.
Taylor wouldn’t be satisfied till she heard the final verdict, whenever it all came to a head. Or maybe she’d never be satisfied, since none of this would ever bring her mom back.
But Nancy being held without bail wasn’t the end of her problems. Grandpa was home from the hospital, and though her cousin Ellery was a good babysitter, he was not thankful to be babysat.
Taylor also still had raccoons in her attic, Belle had snuck her weird genius boyfriend over and he had stayed the night, and they were behind schedule on the YouTube series.
These were the tales of woe and trial Taylor poured out for Hudson over dinner at Berry Noir.
He passed her his phone, the number for a local pest control on the screen. “Call now and it’s one thing off that list.”
She smiled fondly at the phone. She could appreciate a problem solver. She used to think she was one, after all. She called and scheduled the racoon removal for the beginning of the next week.
“When they’re gone,” Hudson said, “I’ll come in and do the real repair work. It’s a pretty great apartment, I have to say. Ever thought of renting it out? Could be a nice side income for you.”
“I’d rather turn it into the operations base for Flour Sax. Mom was onto something with her show. This could get pretty big if I play it right.”
“Everyone but Dutch Hex would be thrilled.”
Taylor laughed. Having a set plan for the racoon problem had lifted a weight. “You follow Comfort quilt gossip?”
“Just since you came back to town.” He gave her a half grin, his eyes hooded and frankly sexy. Though he wore yet another plaid shirt, this wasn’t flann
el, and he had that cleaned up on a date look that never does a man wrong.
“Listen…” Her mood shifted like a cloud on a windy day.
“I know, you’re not up for a rebound. I get it. No pressure. And look! A change of subject.” He grinned broadly. “How about I swing by this weekend and build a ramp for Ernie? I know the oxygen has been helpful, but I’m thinking those steps to the door might not be his best friends.”
Taylor considered the amount of anger and fighting she’d get back from Grandpa Ernie if she made permanent changes to “his” house. “How about to the kitchen door?”
“Can do.”
“Having my cousin stay with Grandpa Ernie is a temporary fix. I can see that now. He’s going to have to go to a home and I’m going to have to figure out how to make that happen.”
“That won’t be easy.”
“Nope.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes.
“Speaking of quilt gossip, Shara over at Dutch Hex is refusing to participate in the Christmas in July event.”
“Why?” Whether he really cared about quilt shop gossip or not, he acted like he did, which was sweet.
“She said it’s against the aesthetic of her store.”
“But she’s pseudo Amish, right? And they’re some kind of Christians.”
“They’re the not fussy ones. They don’t decorate for the holidays, I guess. I wonder if it’s really that she can’t pony up for the coop ads we’re running.” Taylor dabbed at the sauce that was left over on her plate with a bite of dinner roll.
“Let me guess, you had to put all of that together.”
“Far from it. It’s a well-organized event and no one even called to ask for help. Much good my retail management and MBA are in this town.” Not that Taylor minded right now. She couldn’t imagine when she would have found time to create an ad campaign. “There was an emergency meeting of the Guild the other day. They texted Mom’s old number to tell us about it.” Taylor shrugged. “They did call the shop to apologize and updated my contact info after I was a no-show.”
“Your racoon problem is checked off the list now, what’s next? Belle? Need me to knock some sense into that guy who stayed over?”
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