Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)

by Isabella Alan

  “Sorry about that.” She forced a smile after stowing her cleaning supplies. She wiped her hands off on her khaki pants. “I thought I would get some dusting in while the store was empty. You wouldn’t believe the amount of dust we collect in here, and that’s just in the front sales room. Out back where the Amish craftsmen work, the sawdust is so much worse . . .” She trailed off when she saw my hat. “You’re from the police?” Her voice is sharp. “Is this about Griff?”

  “I would like to talk to you about Griffin Bright,” I said as officially as possible.

  Her frown deepened. “And is he a police dog?”

  “Umm,” I said. “He’s in training.”

  Oliver made a snuffling sound that, if it had been translated from dog to English, would have been “Oh, brother.”

  She folded her arms. “I don’t know what more I can tell you. I’ve already spoken to the sheriff and I’ve even been fingerprinted.”

  That was interesting.

  “Do you know how humiliating that is?” she asked. Tears gathered in her eyes.

  Actually I did, but I didn’t tell her that.

  “You and Griffin were engaged?”

  She glared at me, but then her shoulders drooped. “I might as well dust while I answer your questions.” She collected her spray bottle and rag and walked to the back corner of the store where the bedroom furniture was.

  In the corner of the display area, an ornately carved nightstand caught my eye. It consisted of three drawers and each drawer had a different quilt pattern carved into the front of it. I spotted a Rolling Block, a Goosefoot, and a Wedding Ring. I gravitated toward it and ran my hand over the smooth top. “This is a beautiful piece.”

  Mallory smiled. “You have a good eye. That must make you a good cop.”

  “Observation is important in police work,” I said, praying Mitchell never found out about this conversation.

  She sprayed the top of the nightstand and began to polish it. “That one has always been my favorite. I think that’s why I have it hidden back in the corner here because I don’t want anyone to buy it.”

  I stepped out of the way of the spray bottle. “The craftsmanship is amazing.”

  “The man who made it said he was inspired by his wife’s quilts.”

  “I can see that. It’s beautiful. I would love to see the quilts that inspired it. They must be breathtaking. I own a—” I stopped myself just in time. I almost told her about Running Stitch.

  She looked up at me as she moved to the next nightstand with her spray bottle. “You own a what?”

  “Oh, I was just going to say that I own a few Amish quilts, is all.”

  “Most people in this county do.” She opened the drawer of the second nightstand and wiped the inside. Her bracelets made a terrible racket as they knocked against the sides of the drawer.

  “Tell me about Griffin,” I said.

  Mallory sniffed and tears gathered into her eyes as she straightened up. “I hate that man.”

  My eyes went wide. “Why’s that?”

  She removed a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “Because he died and left me. Now, I don’t know what to do . . .” Her breath caught.

  “Weren’t you broken up?”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t reconcile. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t finally come around and we would get married.”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” I said sincerely.

  “I still don’t think I’ve accepted he’s gone. I keep feeling irritated he hasn’t called or texted me today, and then I remember he’s gone. Isn’t that awful I feel angry at him like that?”

  “I’d think it was perfectly normal when you lost someone,” I said.

  She put the tissue back in her pocket. “I shouldn’t have come to work today. My brother, who is also my boss, tried to send me home earlier, but what good would that do? Griff isn’t there and being at home will only remind me of his absence.”

  “How long were you engaged?”

  She flashed me her left hand. “I don’t have a ring. He never asked me to marry him even though he promised that he would. Someday. We were together for ten years, and I never got a proposal. Now that he’s dead, I have nothing to show for that relationship, just a wasted decade of my life.” She sat on the double bed next to the quilt-carved nightstand as if her legs no longer had the strength to hold her up.

  “You have your memories,” I said. It didn’t sound like much of a consolation even to my own ears.

  “Whatever good those will do me. I wish I had never given him that ultimatum. Then, at least, he wouldn’t be angry with me when he died. That’s something I will have to live with,” she said bitterly.

  “What ultimatum was that?”

  She sighed. “It was my fortieth birthday, and I was staring middle age right in the face. I wanted to be married and have children. I wanted a real life that mattered. I didn’t want to keep limping along, waiting for Griff to make up his mind about our future. What right does he have to make all the decisions?” She sighed. “So at my birthday dinner, I gave him an ultimatum. I said he had to either marry me in the next year or we were over. Well, since we broke up, I suppose you can guess what option he chose.”

  “Did he ever say why he didn’t want to get married?”

  She frowned.

  Maybe I pushed too hard. “I’m only asking because I was in a similar situation. I was with the same man for seven years. He ultimately didn’t want to get married because he was afraid of commitment.”

  “Men!” She removed the tissue from her pocket a second time and pressed it to her face. “You would have thought seven years with one person would qualify as commitment. Or in my case, ten years.”

  “You’d think,” I agreed.

  She nodded. “Then you’ve been through it too. Griff said that he didn’t have any use for marriage the day we broke up. Honestly, I knew that when we started dating over a decade ago. At the time, I never thought it would bother me. Years later, it did more than I ever expected it to.”

  “On the day Griffin died, you told the police that you hadn’t seen Griffin for a couple of days.”

  “What’s your point?” she asked.

  “We have an eyewitness that saw you in his truck the day before he died outside the Braddocks’ home.”

  “That’s the rich lady’s house where he died, right?”

  Internally wincing, I nodded.

  She glared at me. “So what if I was there? I was trying to talk some sense into him. He was overloaded with work. The only time I could talk to him was when he drove from job to job. A lot of good that did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police that when you arrived at the crime scene?”

  “I don’t know. I just found out that he was murdered. Haven’t you ever fibbed to the cops?”

  I didn’t answer that.

  “I guess being a cop, you wouldn’t have done that,” she said as if she found it disappointing.

  If she only knew . . .

  She rubbed the wad of tissues across her nose. “I’m sorry. It’s just so hard to believe he’s dead. I still love him, you know. I left him because we didn’t want the same things, but I did love him. I had since the day that I met him.”

  “How did the two of you meet?” I asked.

  Her face softened as she recalled the memory. “At the county fair. I was there with my girlfriends, determined to win a teddy bear for myself from one of those silly games where you throw a softball at a stack of milk bottles. I had three balls and missed my first two throws. Griff came up behind me and took the third ball from my hand just when I was about to throw it. He tossed it at the milk bottles and won me the bear.”

  I hid a frown. If a man I didn’t know came up to me like that and won me a teddy bear, I would
tell him to keep the bear.

  “It was love at first sight for me.” Her face crumbled, and she set her rag and spray bottle next to her on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have gone home when my brother told me to. My sister keeps texting me, trying to convince me to take the rest of the week off.”

  “Maybe you should go see your sister. Being around family might help,” I said.

  She shook her head. “She lives in Michigan.”

  “Maybe you should take a few days off and go and visit her,” I suggested even though I knew Mitchell would be annoyed with my suggesting that a murder suspect leave the county.

  “She wants me to. She wanted me to drive to Michigan today, but I can’t go yet. I have to know what will happen to Griff. If there is a funeral or any kind of service, I want to be there.” Her mouth turned down. “I hope I will be told.”

  “Have you spoken to his family about the funeral arrangements?” I asked.

  She laughed. “He only had a brother, Blane, and no, I haven’t. Blane and I don’t get along.”

  “Maybe you should talk to Linda from Double Dime then,” I suggested.

  Her blue eyes narrowed as if seeing me for the first time. “How do you know Griff’s connection with Linda?”

  I recovered quickly. “The police know about Linda being Griffin and Blane’s foster mother.”

  “Oh, right.” She eyed me suspiciously. “But why are you suggesting that I go see my sister in Michigan? The sheriff told me that I couldn’t leave town.”

  Her rag slid off the edge of the bed and floated to the carpet. Automatically, I bent over and picked up the rag. As I did so, my hat fell to the floor and my curls tumbled into my face. I snatched up the rag and hat, but it was too late.

  “Hey!” Mallory yelled, jumping up from the bed. “I’ve seen you before. You’re not a cop.”

  “I never said that I was.” That was technically true.

  “I saw you at the house where Griff was killed!”

  “I’m Angie Braddock and own Running Stitch in Rolling Bro—”

  “Braddock!” she gasped. “Didn’t Griff die in your home?”

  I shook my head. “It isn’t my home. It’s my mother’s,” I said, as if that would make a difference to her. I knew it wouldn’t.

  “So you are here about Griff’s death? You’re pumping me for information, and you’re not even a cop.” She glared at me. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

  “Please, let me explain.” I held up my hands as if in surrender.

  “Why should I?”

  I bit the inside of my lip. “I’m a friend of Linda’s. She asked me to look into her son’s death.”

  “Her son?” Mallory scoffed. “She wasn’t Griff’s mother.”

  “She was his foster mother,” I said, going on the defensive myself.

  “That’s not the same thing.” Her face was almost purple.

  I took a big step back from her. “It is to Linda. She’s heartbroken over his death.”

  “She can’t be as heartbroken as I am,” she snapped. “She has no right to be.”

  Before I could ask her what she meant by that last comment, the store’s front door opened, and a tall, lanky man strode in wearing a polo shirt with the store’s logo embroidered over the pocket. He marched toward us. I was trapped between the two of them, clutching Mitchell’s hat in my hands.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “I said it’s time for you to go,” Mallory said to me again, this time through gritted teeth.

  “Everything okay, Mal?” the man asked, appraising me while he spoke.

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything’s fine. This customer was just leaving. We didn’t have what she needed.”

  I was relieved that she hadn’t said my true purpose for coming to the store or the fact that I sort of misled her into believing I was a police officer.

  I gave the lovely little nightstand a mournful look, and Oliver and I headed for the door.

  I turned as I reached the door. “You should speak to Linda. I know she’d love to hear from someone who cared about Griff as much as she did.”

  Mallory folded her arms and glared at me.

  I sighed and walked out into the sunlight.

  Giving Oliver a boost into my car, I said, “Maybe the hat was a bad idea.”

  He gave me a look that said, “I told you so.”

  By the time Oliver and I returned to Running Stitch, it was only a half hour before the shop closed. Sugartree Street was quieting down, and I felt it was late enough in the day to take one of the diagonal parking spots in front of my quilt shop. Typically, I left those for the tourists.

  Mattie must have seen me coming down the street because she opened the door for Oliver and me. “That cat of yours has been a complete terror.”

  Oliver ran into the shop to check on his charge. Dodger was curled up in Oliver’s dog bed, sound asleep. It looked like the contented slumber of the victorious to me.

  Mattie waved a pot holder at me. “Look what he did to this!”

  I slung my bag on the sales counter and took the pot holder that Mattie offered. The front of the pot holder had been slashed. I flipped it over. The back wasn’t much better.

  “When I saw he had it, I tried to get it away from him, and the little monster took off with it. It took quite a battle to get it back.”

  I winced. I didn’t doubt it, but at the same time I hid a smile. I would have loved to see Mattie in her Amish lavender dress chasing Dodger all over the shop with the pot holder in his mouth.

  Dodger opened one eye and the corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. The faker wasn’t even sleeping.

  “You can’t keep bringing him here if he’s going to destroy the merchandise.” Mattie folded her arms.

  She had a point, but before I could answer, the little bell on the shop’s door jingled and Zander bounded inside. “Angie!” he cried.

  His mother, Hillary, came in after him. She was breathtakingly beautiful with long, straight raven-colored hair, which I’d envied since the moment I had met her. Zander had his mother’s hair and his father’s eyes. Anyone could see he was a gorgeous child and would be a devastatingly handsome man someday.

  Hillary carried Zander’s Thor backpack. “Hello, Angie.” Her greeting, although friendly, wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as her son’s had been.

  I wouldn’t exactly say that Hillary and I were friends, but we were cordial, and if she didn’t happen to be my boyfriend’s ex-wife, I probably would have liked her a lot more.

  “This is a surprise,” I said. “You need quilting supplies?”

  “Didn’t James tell you that I’d be dropping Zander by? I have a charity event this evening in Canton for my job, and I can’t take him with me. Since this was supposed to be James’s week with Zander as it was, he said I could leave Z with you until he got off work.”

  I removed my phone from my pocket and looked at the screen. Sure enough, there were six text messages and one call from Mitchell warning me about Hillary’s arrival. I had turned the phone onto silent before going into the Zeff Oak Emporium because I hadn’t wanted to be interrupted by my mother’s ranting about my father’s physical therapy.

  I waved the phone. “He sure did. I just missed the message. Of course Zander can hang with me.”

  “Good.” Her brow smoothed. “James said he’ll pick him up around eight.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  She paused at the door. “You must be excited about James’s parents coming up for a visit for a few days. It will be the first time you will meet them in person—isn’t that right?”

  I felt the color drain from my face. What? What was she talking about? Mitchell’s parents were coming to Rolling Brook? I knew the couple moved to Florida and had lived there for years. Mitchell and Zander
went to see them at least twice per year. I had never gone, and I had never met them. Mitchell had asked me to go their last trip, which had been over Zander’s spring break in March. I had made up some excuse about not being able to leave the shop. I just hadn’t been ready to meet Mitchell’s parents yet.

  I plastered a smile on my face. “I’m really excited to meet them.”

  Mattie knew about the trip last March. Her face clearly said, “Liar!”

  I widened my eyes at her, and she turned away but not before I saw her shoulders move up and down in suppressed laughter.

  I realized this must have been what Mitchell wanted to tell me the day before. He hadn’t been about to propose marriage at all. To my surprise, I felt a slight pang in my chest. A blush crept up the back of my neck.

  Hillary smiled at me. “I love James’s mother. She and I have always been close. Do you know she still sends me Christmas and birthday cards? And we talk on the phone at least twice a month. She’s such a dear.”

  “That’s great,” I squeaked. “I’m glad that you’re still close to Mitchell’s family. That makes it easier for Zander.”

  She smiled. “It most certainly does.” She opened the door. “Don’t worry, Angie. James’s mother will warm up to you. Eventually.” She flounced out of the shop.

  What was that supposed to mean?

  Mattie left not long after Hillary’s dramatic exit. She didn’t say if she was headed to the mercantile to visit Liam, and I didn’t ask. That left me with a cat, a dog, and a boy.

  I texted Mitchell back and told him that I had Zander with me at Running Stitch and he could pick his son up at the shop because I planned to work late. I didn’t say a word about the trustees’ meeting. I hoped that it would be over by the time Mitchell arrived. I didn’t think he wanted to hear another word about Bigfoot or the central Ohio chapter of the Bigfooter Society.

  “You’ve got homework?” I asked Zander, who was rolling around on the shop floor with Oliver and Dodger.