by Mary Marks
“So you think anyone could be the killer?”
“At this point, yes. That’s why I have to find someone who can actually read this stuff. I got voice mail from Dixie Barcelona on my landline last night. I need to play back the message to get her telephone number.”
“Can’t you access your phone remotely?”
“I never learned how.”
“Well, you can’t go home by yourself. I’ll call Ray and make sure he waits for us. I don’t like the idea of our being in your house alone at night.”
“Okay, but let’s hide the quilts before we leave. We can’t be too careful.”
“I’ve got the perfect hiding place.” She picked up some plastic trash bags from under the kitchen sink. “Follow me.”
We gathered the quilts and walked down the hall to Ray’s office. A six-foot-tall cast iron cabinet stood against one wall, painted with shiny black enamel embellished with gold curlicues and a big golden eagle.
It reminded me of an old-fashioned bank vault. “What is this? This thing must weigh a ton.”
“Half a ton, actually. Took six men to install. It’s a gun safe, among other things.” Lucy punched in a digital code and the small red light on the keypad turned green. She rotated a steel handle that looked like the spokes of a wheel and the heavy door swung open. Inside were several rifles neatly lined up, standing vertically on their stocks. Handguns rested on the shelves.
I stared at Lucy. This was a side of the Mondellos I’d never seen. “What is all of this for?”
“You’re looking at Ray’s collection. Kind of an investment. Some of these are antique, some rare, and some for personal use.”
“When would you ever use these guns?”
“Hopefully never, but where we come from, guns are a part of everyday life. Living in Wyoming meant you owned guns for hunting and for protection against predators.”
“Even the two-legged kind?”
“Especially them.”
I peered inside. Several other shelves and drawers were filled with boxes. “What are these for?”
“Some are for ammunition, some for cash and documents, and some for my jewelry. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I think we can stuff these pillowcases between the rifles. First let’s put them in the plastic bags. We don’t want any gun oil to get on the fabric.”
Once the quilts were safely stowed, Lucy closed the heavy door and turned the wheel, locking them safely inside.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay. Let’s get over to my house.”
Lucy called Ray and told him we were coming. Just as she hung up, her phone rang. “Hi, Birdie. Yes, she’s up. I’m taking her back to her house to get something. Listen. Martha discovered the secret of Claire’s quilts!”
Lucy put her hand over the phone. “Birdie’s coming with us. She wants to hear what you found.”
From the backseat of Lucy’s Caddie, I explained everything to Birdie.
“And the answer came to you in a dream?”
“Yes.”
“Ah . . .” She tapped her head. “The little gray cells. They never rest, n’est-ce pas?”
We laughed.
When I opened my front door, Ray Mondello was waiting for us in his flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Ray was a few inches shorter than Lucy. At sixty-six years old, he still had a full head of dark, straight hair. He smiled at me and winked, as if to say, “I’ve got your back.”
I looked around and, even though I’d already seen the destruction, I was still shocked by the mess the killer made of my house. I walked over to Ray and he wrapped me in a big hug.
“How’s my girl?” He patted my back. Good old Ray. Heart of gold and utterly dependable. “I hope you don’t plan to stay here tonight.”
“No. I just came to listen to my messages, then I’m going to drive myself back to your house.”
“That’s my girl.”
I carefully picked my way through the debris in the kitchen. The floor was filled with breakable items that had shattered when they hit the hard brown ceramic tiles. Ray located my broom and began to sweep up the mess. I found my phone upside down on a pile of what used to be my white coffee and tea canisters. I picked up the handset lying nearby and miraculously heard a dial tone.
I pulled my notepad and a pen from my purse and replayed Dixie’s message, writing down her number.
While Ray swept, Lucy and Birdie drifted into the living room. They replaced the cushions on the sofa and picked up the books that the killer pushed out of the bookcases.
Then Joey walked into the living room. He was the only one of Lucy’s five boys with light hair and blue eyes. The others all got Ray’s dark hair and eyes. “Hi, everyone.” Joey turned to his father. “I finished the window, Pops.”
“Okay. We’re outta here.”
They waited for me while I picked up some clothes for the wake and funeral. As we walked to the front door, I hugged Joey. “Thank you so much for your help.”
Joey was the only one of Lucy’s boys who didn’t finish college. Like his father, Joey was most comfortable working with his hands. By the time he was twenty, he was a licensed carpenter, and by twenty-five he owned his own contracting business.
“A piece of cake, Aunt Martha, but it sucks this happened to you. Dad and I agreed I’m gonna install an alarm system so you’ll be safer. I’ll have you hooked up by Friday.”
Joey brushed off my offer to pay. “You’re family.”
I drove my car back to Lucy’s. On the way, I punched in Dixie’s number on my cell phone. I got her voice mail. “Dixie, this is Martha Rose. I really need to talk to you right away. I think I’ve figured out something about Claire’s quilts, but I need an expert’s help. This is urgent because I have to give the quilts back to the Terrys by noon tomorrow. I’m staying with friends at the moment, so please call me on my cell.”
I gave her the number and then hung up. Now I just hoped she’d get the message before I returned the quilts tomorrow. While there was still a chance, I wanted to find out what secrets were hidden in the Braille—secrets terrible enough to kill for.
CHAPTER 21
Back at the Mondello house, I installed myself in front of Lucy’s computer and downloaded Claire’s files from the flash drive. Little pieces of paper flew from one folder to the next on the screen when Lucy came into the room. She handed me a steaming mug of French roast with milk. “There’s a fresh pot of this in the kitchen, and the quilts are back in your room.”
“Thanks, Luce. I’m going to be up for a while.”
“So, what are you looking for?”
“While I’m waiting for Dixie’s call, I’m going to dive into Claire’s files and see what I can dig up.”
Lucy yawned. “Well, unlike some people we know, I didn’t sleep all day. Ray and I are going to turn in now. Feel free.” She gave a generous wave toward the house. I knew this was Lucy’s shorthand for Take what you need. Mi casa es su casa.
A melodic prompt from the computer told me the files were downloaded. Scrolling down the list I stopped at the James Trueville folder. Would Claire’s ex-husband have a reason to want her dead? I double clicked on the folder and read the most recent document first.
March 13
James:
I trust the enclosed documents will finally put an end to all the wrangling of the past. I’m glad you’ve found happiness. I, too, have finally found a measure of my own.
Claire
Cc: John Doud, Will Terry
The happiness she was talking about must have been her pregnancy and her love affair. According to the gossip at the board meetings, the wrangling of the past was over her divorce settlement.
I took a sip of caffeine and looked at an earlier message.
February 2
James:
I’m glad you’ve reconsidered your demand for Palm Beach. I’ve already signed over Aspen and I’m prepared to sign over your choice of either the villa in Hanalei or St. Feliu—if that means we’re fi
nally done.
Just call John Doud and let him know your decision. He’s prepared to execute the documents.
Claire
Cc: John Doud, Will Terry
Holy crap. Claire owned places in Aspen, Palm Beach, Hawaii, and somewhere called St. Feliu? Where the heck was St. Feliu?
Three clicks into Google and I stared at a medieval town with sunny beaches on the Costa Brava, the Mediterranean side of Spain. Must be nice.
Their earlier correspondence was full of posturing and demands. Eventually they’d settled the last of their financial differences. Jamey boy walked away with at least two luxury houses, a wad of cash in the eight figures, and a smile on his face. Somehow I couldn’t see this guy needing Claire dead.
Since I was logged into Google, I typed in Braille alphabet and got tens of thousands of hits, all revealing the same thing. A Braille cell was the basic unit, oriented like a tall rectangle made up of two columns. The first column had spaces numbered from one to three top to bottom. The second column had spaces four to six numbered top to bottom. Each letter of the alphabet occupied one cell and had a unique pattern of one to five dots arranged within the six spaces.
Could I decipher the quilt on my own? I’d have to choose a quilt with dots that were easy to see, like the one with the white cloud background. I printed out a copy of the alphabet and took it along with a ruler from Lucy’s desk and the Mother’s Asleep quilt to Lucy’s kitchen.
I spread out the quilt on the table and peered closely. Where was the beginning? I used the ruler to help me find the line of text and started in the upper left-hand corner with the printout right alongside for easy reference.
The first dot was in the number six position, which meant, according to the printout, the next letter should be a capital letter. After painstakingly searching the printout, I discovered the first letter was an m, so I wrote a capital M in my notepad. The second letter was a y. It took five minutes to read the first word, My.
Oh my God. I did it. I cracked the code! I leapt up and dislodged a ginger-colored fuzz ball sleeping in my lap. Bumper looked at me scornfully while I did a little victory dance with a lot of hip action.
At this rate, it would take three weeks to read the quilt, but I was almost out of time. I needed Dixie. I looked at my watch. Midnight. Darn! Why hadn’t she called?
I sat back down and Bumper jumped up in my lap again. With the help of a ruler to keep track of the lines of text, I got better at reading. Thirty minutes later I’d written on my notepad:
My mother alcoholic.
Whoa. This wasn’t what I expected. What kind of story was Claire telling here, and did I really want to know more? The elegant Siobhan didn’t strike me as a drinker. She looked pretty well put together for a woman in her seventies. There was no sign of booze when she served tea on Sunday. She must be sober now.
I pressed on. In another thirty minutes I came up with:
M never there 4 me when I child.
This was beginning to sound like a typical adolescent’s diary—lots of complaints about Mom. I glanced at my watch. One-thirty in the morning. I was hyped up on caffeine and not at all sleepy, so I continued to read.
M pass out every night 9 pm.
I looked up from the quilt and rubbed my eyes. What was it like for Claire to have a mother who wasn’t there for her? Must have been pretty lonely. My mother had been so traumatized by my father’s death, she was incapable of taking care of herself, let alone a daughter. I’d had my bubbie and Uncle Isaac. Who’d been there for Claire?
I stepped back and looked at the quilt again. A nude woman slept on clouds with teardrop-shaped beads dripping down. Of course. This quilt wasn’t about rainmaking, as I’d first thought, but absent mothers and sadness, lots of sadness.
After two in the morning, I freshened the coffee in my cup and started again to slowly read the encrypted words.
Daddy’s night visits
The hair on the back of my neck bristled. Uh-oh. What was I reading here? What did she mean, night visits? I hoped this wasn’t leading anywhere bad. began when I 10yo.
Okay, okay. So maybe he came in to read her a story or tuck her in, things her mother would have done if she hadn’t been passed out.
He say I love of his life.
Okay. Love is a good thing, right? Wasn’t he just making up for the love and attention she didn’t get from her alcoholic mother?
I was hooked. The time was now after three, but I couldn’t stop reading.
He only wore bathro . . .
Oh my God. I stopped reading. Something acid crept up from my stomach, and I felt as if I’d just taken a dirt bath. Was this real? If so, Will Terry was a child molester! I fingered the teardrop-shaped beads Claire had sewn so extensively on this quilt.
These messages must be why Terry tried to talk me out of examining the quilts and gave me so little time with them. He said if I came up with nothing, he was afraid of what the disappointment might do to Siobhan, but he didn’t give a crap about Siobhan. He just wanted to keep the truth hidden—a terrible, damning truth.
If Claire was a victim of incest, that would be a huge motive for Will Terry not wanting the information in the quilts to get out. He could have been behind the theft of the quilts, the attempted theft at Claire’s house, and the break-in at my house. Still, was he capable of murdering his daughter, the “love of his life”?
What about Siobhan? If she knew about the incest, would she really have wanted me to discover the secrets in Claire’s quilts? Most families wanted to keep such awful secrets hidden from the outside world.
I looked back down at Mother’s Asleep. There was much more to decode, but I was so done. I’d become an unwitting voyeur to an appalling tragedy and wished I’d never agreed to help.
I looked at my watch. Four. A wave of revulsion and emotional exhaustion washed over me. I folded the quilt and put it back in the pillowcase. There was still enough time to grab a couple hours of sleep.
I walked back to Lucy’s office, but before I turned off the computer, I opened Claire’s digital photo album and briefly examined the pictures of her quilts. Fortunately, she’d taken extensive close-ups clearly showing the knots on all the quilts, except those with a dark background. Good. Even though I had to give the quilts back tomorrow, I might still be able to study the Braille from the photos if I needed to.
Claire’s secrets were compelling. She was robbed of her innocence and endured the unspeakable, and now she was dead. Her molester walked around a free man. I vowed to find some justice for Claire if it was the last thing I did.
THURSDAY
CHAPTER 22
At six that morning, I heard Lucy and Ray starting their day, so I got dressed in my uniform of blue jeans and a white V-neck T-shirt, ruffled my curls with wet hands to get rid of the bed hair, and joined them in the kitchen. I poured myself a steaming mug of dark French roast while Lucy set the table for three. She still wore a baby blue chenille bathrobe, but her short orange hair was brushed, her eyebrows were freshly drawn, and her mascara was expertly applied. Dame Judi Dench never looked so good.
“How’d you do last night?”
I told her about the divorce settlement, but I was reluctant to talk about the incest with Ray in the room. “I went on Google and downloaded a copy of the Braille alphabet. I’ve been studying it.”
She put plates of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and toasted English muffins on the table. “Did Dixie Barcelona ever call you back?”
I sat down and opened ajar of raspberry jam. “No, but I don’t think I’ll be asking her to help after all. I really think I’m getting a handle on this Braille thing.”
After breakfast I gathered the dirty dishes from the table as Ray kissed Lucy good-bye. With the difference in their heights, Lucy bent her head a little. This was an endearing and graceful gesture she’d perfected over the years. Ray popped her affectionately on the behind. “See ya later, babe.”
“Love you.” She kissed him.
Whenever we were around Ray, he always gave Lucy a touch, a hug, a kiss.
Then he smiled. “You babes stay out of trouble today.” We liked being Ray’s babes.
I’d never seen Russell touch Birdie, let alone kiss her. Whenever we were at Birdie’s house, he nodded his head. “You girls carry on.” Girls. The way he said it I always felt dismissed—the same way Birdie must have felt every day of her married life.
Birdie once confided they hadn’t been intimate in years. “Do you think he has another woman?” She’d had tears in her eyes.
Lucy reached out and touched her arm. “Did you ever consider that he might be gay?” Because of Richie, Lucy was developing quite a gaydar.
Birdie’s mouth dropped open. “Frankly, I don’t know what is worse, the idea of Russell having an affair with a man or a woman.”
“Why do you stay with him?” I asked.
“I’m too old to change now. I resigned myself a long time ago where my marriage is concerned. I try to fill my life with other things, like my gardening, my friends, and my quilting. I don’t know what I’d do without the two of you.” Then she cried.
Lucy and Ray smiled at each other in the secret way lovers did. Their marriage was an unlikely success. They’d been sweethearts in high school and, despite the fact they married in their teens, neither Ray nor Lucy seemed to think they’d ever missed out on anything—college, parties, dating, travel. Their life together was exactly what each of them wanted and they were happier than anyone else I knew.
Fingers of envy and self-pity squeezed my heart, and I turned toward the sink to hide my teary eyes. If I could go back and make my life’s choices all over again, I’d do it their way.