Murder on a Starry Night: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “It’s not calculated, Adele, I promise. After all that’s happened lately, you are probably suspicious of anyone who speaks to you.”

  Adele managed a slight laugh. “And anyone I speak to is suspicious of me. I know what people think, Po.”

  “People are frightened, Adele, that’s all. We’re a quiet town, quiet neighborhoods. And anything that disrupts our lives makes people nervous and wary. It’s the curse and blessing of small town living.”

  “How could anyone think I’d kill my twin brother?” she asked suddenly.

  Po shook her head. “I don’t know, Adele. But you swept down on us so suddenly, took over this house, after not being here for such a long time. People don’t know what to think.”

  “And what do you think, Po?” Adele’s shoulders stiffened with the question. She looked directly into Po’s eyes.

  “I don’t think you killed Ollie, Adele. And I don’t think you killed Joe Bates or set fire to that garage, though you’ve given people reason to believe you might harm Joe.”

  “That’s nonsense.” Adele’s voice became stronger as she spoke. But the familiar edge was softened. “Joe Bates and I never got along. Even when I was a child. He loved Ollie and he loved my mother, but I was always a nuisance to him. I know he watched over Ollie—my mother charged him with his care—and that was a good thing. But when I came back and Ollie was gone, but he was still here along with all those memories, I was resentful, I think. Irrationally so, perhaps. And I took out my frustration on him. But God knows I didn’t kill him.”

  Adele lowered her head and Po could see the moisture return to her eyes.

  When she spoke again, there was sadness coating her words. “I guess I resented him for doing what I didn’t do—being here for Ollie. Helping him after my mother died. All those things. Seeing him everyday made it worse.”

  “Well, he did a good job of caring for Ollie, Adele, so you can take solace in that. He was a good friend to him.”

  “And I think he understood him better than I ever did.”

  The sound of a truck on the driveway broke into their conversation, and Po rose to look out the window above the sink. “Workmen,” she said to Adele.

  “Yes,” Adele answered.

  Po watched her as she took another drink of water, wondering if Adele would be able to manage here by herself. Without her make-up and fine clothes, Adele looked younger, and even though her face registered discomfort, she looked oddly beautiful. Gone was the stony façade that kept people at a distance, the piercing look that caused others to look away or shift their weight from one foot to another. But also gone was the appearance of someone who was totally self-sufficient and impervious to outside forces.

  Adele Harrington looked vulnerable.

  “Po,” Adele said, looking up from her chair. “Po, do you think—”

  Po waited, but the sentence hung there in the air for so long, Po thought for a minute Adele had forgotten what she was going to ask. “Yes?” she finally prompted.

  “Po, do you think it’s time I threw in the towel?”

  For a minute, Po wasn’t sure what Adele was asking. And then as she followed her gaze around the room, the big, beautiful old home, she realized what Adele was suggesting.

  “And move away, you mean? Sell the home, pack up your dream?”

  Adele nodded slowly. “I’m a strong woman, Po. I’ve had to be independent for a long time. My mother urged me out of this house and into a world in which women had the disadvantage. But I’ve always held my own. Always.”

  Po listened as Adele continued. “This house was never mine, you know. Coming back after Ollie died, I thought maybe I could make it a lovely place, make it mine. Fill it with people. Pull up the memories I have that are good, bury the others. I thought I could bring back my mother and my brother somehow, adding beauty to this place they loved.”

  “And you can, Adele. It’s going to be a magnificent place.”

  “But what is happening around me? Someone doesn’t want me here, Po. Someone wants this house in a terrible, insane way. And how many people will be hurt while I stubbornly hang on to it?” Adele winced as she tried to shift in the chair.

  “Adele, you can’t let others rule your life.” Po walked over to the sink and poured herself a glass of water. She looked out at the workman pulling ladders and toolboxes from their truck. She saw a gardener take a wheelbarrow from the garage, and in the distance, she heard someone whistling a light sweet tune. She turned from the sink and felt an enormous resolve.

  “Adele,” Po said. “You can’t let anyone take this away from you. This is your home. Somehow, I promise you, we will bring an end to the bad things happening here. And you will be at home again. Now let’s get on with it.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Despite the fact that gossip sometimes ran rampant in Crestwood, when push came to shove, it was a place where neighbors looked out for neighbors. And when Po made a call to Leah’s husband, Tim, at his busy pediatric practice and asked him to stop by on his way home to check the sprained ankle of a fifty-two-year-old woman, she knew the favor would be granted.

  “She’ll be fine, Po,” Tim assured her when he called later that evening. “Adele has a couple of crutches to help her around for the next few days, but she’s one determined lady, and I don’t think anything as minor as a fat ankle will keep her down for long.”

  Po smiled into the phone at the description of Adele. She was a strong lady, for sure. But she also had a soft spot. And Po suspected that it would certainly widen in time and allow more people in.

  “By the way, Po,” Tim added. “Leah mentioned to me that Adele had boarded her dog the day of the fire and it was raising some eyebrows. Sounded suspicious, I guess.”

  “Yes?” Po had not addressed that with Adele herself. But she knew—she hoped—there was a reason, because Tim was correct—it was very suspicious.

  “Well, she mentioned to me that she had had the yard sprayed,” Tim said. “She wondered if I thought she was being overly protective by not wanting Emerson around the chemicals. I told her no, that I thought she was one wise lady. Those chemicals are awful for dogs—and kids,” Tim added, before hanging up the phone.

  For a brief moment, Po felt a wash of shame for doubting Adele’s motives. And then great relief, and then she grinned and moved on with her phone calls.

  A call to Eleanor assured Po that Adele would have food the next day. Eleanor would stop by 210 Kingfish Drive the next day with groceries, a stack of her travel magazines, and a deck of cards. And Kate said she’d check in on Adele periodically as she jogged by the house on her daily runs.

  And Po herself would help out by donning an old pair of jeans and a Canterbury sweatshirt, and begin rummaging through the charred remains of Joe’s apartment, saving Adele the grief of doing so herself.

  “Thank you, Po,” Adele said when Po showed up the next Thursday morning. “I don’t know why you are all pitching in like this. But I—”

  “Oh, shush,” Po said. “It’s what we do.”

  “Well, you do it well,” Adele allowed. She sat in a sunroom just off the kitchen, her foot wrapped in a flesh-colored bandage and elevated on a small stool. Windows surrounded her on three sides, and she could easily monitor the activity and comings and goings of the workman without moving an inch. To the side, spread out on a low coffee table, were piles of papers, forms, and a laptop computer.

  “This looks like command central, Adele.” The color had come back into Adele’s high cheekbones, and she was dressed comfortably today in loose, soft slacks and a silky teal-green blouse. She looked quite beautiful, Po thought.

  Adele nodded. “They don’t know it, but with that window open,” Adele nodded to a window next to the couch, “I can hear everything they say. It’s an education, believe me.”

  “I’ve no doubt.” Po laughed.

  “But the sad thing is,” Adele continued, watching the men beyond her window, “some of them are refusing to come to wor
k. The crew has diminished considerably in the past week.”

  Po frowned. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “They don’t want to be connected to what’s happening here. They hate it that television cameras stop by and film them. But the real reason, I know, is that they hear the rumors, too. They know that some people think I killed Joe—and there are even some who think I killed my brother. I can’t say I blame the workmen for not wanting to be here. But I can’t afford to be without them. Every delay costs me money.”

  There was genuine sadness shadowing Adele’s face, and Po had a powerful urge to find the contractor and give him a piece of her mind. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Aloud, she said, “Would you like some coffee before I tackle the carriage house?”

  Adele shook her head no. “I don’t know how bad it is up there, Po, but it should be safe. The fireman said they were able to control it before the foundation was weakened.” She looked across the drive at the open windows and charred sills of the garage apartment, then back at Po. “If it’s too awful and the smell is too bad, please don’t stay. I don’t think there’s much of value up there, Po. My mother filled the place with old cast-off books from our library, hoping Joe Bates might educate himself. He never seemed very interested though. All I really care about are things of Oliver’s—please save them for me. Contrary to that librarian’s rantings, I would never have thrown anything of my brother’s away.”

  “I think Halley is still emotional over Oliver’s death, Adele. I don’t think she means those things.”

  “Oh, Po, that’s where you’re wrong. She means them. But for the life of me, I don’t know where her accusations are coming from.”

  Po picked up her work gloves. She didn’t want to argue with Adele. Besides, she had a point. Halley did seem to attack Adele rather severely. That was one of the things Po intended to ask Halley about when she had a chance. That, and what the young woman thought she could possibly find in Joe’s apartment that was worth trespassing and angering Adele. Perhaps spending a little time in the carriage house herself would shed some light on Halley’s obsession with it. “Well, I’m off,” she said to Adele. “You can call me on my cell phone if you need anything. I’ve left the number there beside your computer.”

  Adele waved her hand in the air. “I’m fine, Po. I get around quite nicely on these crutches—and they make nice battering poles should anyone give me trouble.”

  Po took several plastic bags from the kitchen, then walked across the driveway and up the back steps of the carriage house. It was a bright, crisp fall day, and the clean air was a sharp contrast to the awful stench on the other side of Joe Bates’ door. Po walked in cautiously, feeling the presence of the old man who had kept to himself so severely these past years.

  Light from the open windows revealed a soot-filled, damp room with a small galley kitchen at one end. Off to one side, Po walked into a room with a bed and dresser, cluttered now with burnt ceiling tiles scattered everywhere. Remnants of barely recognizable personal items—a hairbrush and floppy hat, books, and a reading lamp—lay like clumps of coal on the floor. Here and there small pud dles of water remained, reminders of the firemen’s attack against the flames. And everywhere was the pungent odor of burnt matter.

  Joe’s place must have been cozy before the fire racked such havoc, Po thought, walking back into the living room and looking around. Built-in blackened bookcases filled an interior wall, and a small brass telescope lay on its side on a table near a window. A gift from Oliver, Po suspected.

  Some things escaped the flames, Po noticed, but almost nothing escaped the force of the water that put them out. An old, overstuffed chair and couch, pushed now to the center of the room, was wet and lumpy, burned on one side but not the other. Po sighed. The remains of a long life reduced to rubble. The sadness that came over her was unexpected—and profound.

  To work, she told herself. There will be time for dealing with sad thoughts later.

  After slipping on her work gloves, Po walked carefully to the bookcase, stepping over broken dishes and burnt dishtowels, black flakes of newspapers and chunks of canned food that had exploded from the heat.

  Some of the shelves held nothing but charred clumps of the Harrington’s old books that Adele had mentioned. But on other shelves, the books were still recognizable. She carefully pulled one from the shelf and read the darkened spine. It was Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, and she tried to think of old Joe, sitting in his chair by the window, reading it. Perhaps Adele was wrong and Joe Bates read avidly, devouring these classics. One never knew everything about another’s life, and the thought of Joe steeping himself in reading pleased Po. You could learn so much about a per-son from the books they read, she thought. She set the book on the floor near her stash of garbage sacks, thinking it might be salvageable—and perhaps even a collector’s item.

  For an hour Po rummaged through books and charred papers, scattered across the shelves and on the floor. She collected those that were still intact and made a small pile near the door, then added some framed pictures of Oliver and his mother that were wavy beneath the glass but still intact. There was a picture of Oliver and Joe, and one of a young Oliver—perhaps twenty or so—standing next to a beautiful young woman. Po took it over to the window and looked at it more closely in the sunlight, rubbing the surface clean with her finger. Only in the bright natural light did Po realize the woman was Adele. She was standing next to her brother, smiling into the camera. Po took a piece of paper towel and rubbed the cracked glass. Adele and Ollie. Happy. Po wrapped the picture in folds of paper towel to protect it and added it to her pile.

  A solid old roll-top desk, its legs darkened by the fire but still holding up the top, stood a few feet from the bookshelf. It was a massive thing, Po saw, and seemed to have resisted the fire by its very boldness. The curved roll-top, swollen with water and singed by flames, stuck when Po tried to slide it up, but a few strong tugs and it gave way. Inside, Po found more of Joe’s life—pads of paper, damp bills, pens and pencils, and several small books. Some legal-looking documents that were waterlogged and curled. Po pressed one flat and could read Ollie’s name at the bottom, but the rest was smeared and indecipherable. Po frowned. Odd. And somewhat unsettling. Po thought about all the claims on Oliver’s house, and the thought that he may have written up a will before he died surfaced briefly, then disappeared beneath the weight of the task in front of her. Po gathered what papers were intact and set them beside the door to look at later.

  Po emptied the cubby-hole containers in the old desk and found bank books and scraps of papers, a small garden guide filled with newspaper clippings on gardening and notes Joe must have written to himself. She picked up a still-intact book jacket, soggy now and darkened from heat. A Plain Man’s Guide to a Starry Night. She smiled at the thought of Joe reading the book, maybe sitting by the window, looking up at the night sky that Jed had written about in his book. Clearly, Adele was wrong. Joe did read. And read books that Ollie would have liked, perhaps that Ollie had encouraged his friend to read.

  Po piled the desk contents into a box and continued poking though the cavernous lower cabinet of the old desk, pulling out more pictures, an old pipe that still had tobacco packed tightly inside the bowl, and a whole stack of legal-sized yellow pads of paper. Po smiled at the pads. She and Joe had something in common—capturing thoughts on yellow pads of paper. Po had them lying all over her house. She picked one up and realized it was Ollie’s, his familiar, neat printing filling the lines. Notes from a class, it looked like, and another cited books from the library, and in the margin of one, she spotted Halley’s name and a small heart doodled next to it. This is the kind of thing Halley must have been looking for, she thought. The things she had shared with Ollie and that Joe had taken from his room before Adele arrived. Po scooped up the pads and added them to her stash. Perhaps she would give Halley the pad with her name on it—a small reminder of how much Ollie cared about her. It would mean somet
hing to Halley, and Adele surely wouldn’t want it.

  A few hours later, Po decided she had done all she could do and the rest could be done by workmen who would remove the debris and prepare the small apartment for its renovation. She hailed a painter walking behind the house and had him help her pile the salvageable things in boxes— the telescope and a couple of lamps that had escaped the fire’s wrath. Some silverware that might have been Adele’s mother’s. Po decided Adele should see them and decide their fate. She directed the painter to carry some of the boxes over to the house, storing them for now in the basement where the smell wouldn’t bother Adele.

  The other things—the desk contents, some books, a pile of photographs and the yellow pads—she piled in boxes and carried to her car. She’d dry them out at home and return to Adele anything that might have memories of Ollie attached to it.

  A day’s work well done, she thought, driving down the driveway and tugging her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans. She was pleased that she had relieved Adele of a task that would clearly be a burden to her.

  And now that the Adele was settled and the carriage house was cleaned out, there were other things Po needed to put her mind to. Phoebe, bless her platinum head, was right this time. Things were moving too slowly, and a woman’s reputation was at stake—and maybe her life. Something had to be done soon to salvage Adele Harrington’s reputation—and the beautiful bed and breakfast inn at 210 Kingfish Drive.

  Po paused at the end of the drive and pushed the buttons on her small silver phone. “P.J.,” she said out loud. “How wonderful that I’ve caught you. How would you like to share a bowl of spicy shrimp soup with me tonight?”

  CHAPTER 21

  “I’m only here because of your cooking, Po,” P.J. said, standing over the stove and stirring the rich coconut milk broth. He closed his eyes and breathed in the pungent smell of garlic, ginger, and parsley. “It’s definitely not the fact that I strongly suspect I’m being lured here for other, less delicious motives.”