by Mary Marks
The next quilt I wanted to examine was the baby quilt, to find out why Alexander Godwin tried to get rid of it, although I was sure I knew—the message would confirm he was the father of Claire’s unborn baby.
The pictures in Claire’s files were so much clearer than the ones I took. I suspected Claire hired a professional photographer to take them. This crib-sized quilt featured yellow baskets with bright gold French knots on a white background. Almost every knot was clearly visible. I began with the photo of the upper left-hand corner of the quilt and laid a ruler on top to find the line of text.
4 my baby but A doesn’t want.
So I was right. Godwin was the father of Claire’s baby. I was starting to get used to Claire’s shorthand.
not leave wife.
Claire must have been devastated when she didn’t find her happy ending after all. Did she know about Godwin’s wife also being pregnant?
I picked up the next photo in the series.
A 4 abort. My heart brokn. All re money.
A whole hour had passed while I deciphered that little bit, but I wasn’t about to stop.
I say no more losing babies.
Poor Claire. Did Godwin panic and kill her because she was determined to keep their baby?
The final entry was the most shocking.
Cancel big money. Tell board. Baby name will b Godwin.
Oh my God. Claire signed her death warrant. If she really intended to expose Godwin, he stood to lose everything. The large donation Claire planned to give to BCA, his career, his reputation, and maybe even his marriage. No wonder he threw this quilt in the Dumpster—the message gave him a strong motive to kill her.
I knew I couldn’t wait any longer to call Beavers.
He picked up on the second ring. “Beavers.” There was a television in the background.
I realized I didn’t know what to call him now that we’d kissed. Detective? Arlo? Honey? “Hey.”
His voice was smiling. “Is this a social call?”
“No. I figured out who the murderer is.”
He chuckled. “Who’s the killer this time?”
I ignored the sarcasm. “It’s still Alexander Godwin.”
“Can’t be. Godwin was with his wife the night of Claire’s murder.”
“Well, duh. Why wouldn’t she lie for him? I have new evidence pointing straight to Godwin as the killer.”
“What new evidence?”
“I read the quilts.”
“What quilts? Are you saying the Terrys handed over the quilts to you?”
“No. I have photos of them.”
The sarcasm left Beavers’s voice. “Photos? What photos?”
“Don’t ask. I just translated the baby quilt and part of the stolen quilt, and—”
“The stolen quilt? You have a part of the stolen quilt? Where’d you get that?”
“Not the quilt itself. I took pictures of it.”
“Don’t you ever listen, Martha? Didn’t I ask you this afternoon to tell me if you knew anything more?”
“That’s why I’m calling. I’m telling you now.”
“Anyone else know?”
“Not yet.”
“Have the photos and the notes ready for me. I’ll be right over, and try your best this time to keep all this to yourself, just for now.”
“Okay, but no kissing!”
Strange sounds came over the phone. Wheezing. Choking.
“Don’t worry.” He swallowed his laughter. “If you’re right, I’ll be too busy closing this case, and if you’re wrong, I’ll be too busy yelling at you.”
CHAPTER 32
Before Beavers arrived, I made a copy of my translation and clipped it to a dozen photos of Claire’s quilt to make a neat package, and as soon as he walked in the door, I handed him the package. He petted Arthur while he looked over the material. “This doesn’t look good for Godwin. I’m going to go pick him up now.” Then he looked at me. “You still have to explain where you got these photos and why you withheld them from the police.”
“You’ve had the photos all along. They’re in Claire’s computer.”
“Did you print those photos before Kaplan took Claire’s computer away?”
I didn’t want to tell him about Lucy downloading them on a flash drive, so I just shrugged my shoulders. He could think whatever he wanted.
Beavers just stared at me, wagged his head in resignation, and turned to go.
“What?”
“You’re either really smart or really lucky, Martha.”
“Give me some credit.” I put my hand on my hip. “Luck didn’t figure out the code was in Braille, and luck didn’t translate the code.”
“But luck has kept you alive so far. Until we know for sure Godwin is the killer, I want you to keep your alarm on and Arthur by your side.”
I thought better of telling him Ray’s semiautomatic pistol was in my bedside table.
That night I dreamt Alexander Godwin broke into my house, dissolved all my headache pills in a glass of wine, and forced me to drink them. When I started to lose consciousness, he carried me to my bed and stood over me with a knife, preparing to stab me. I tried to scream, but I was paralyzed. I woke up with my heart pounding. Arthur must have sensed my distress because he jumped up on the bed and lay down right next to me. Dogs really could read minds.
SUNDAY
CHAPTER 33
At nine the next morning, Lucy and Birdie arrived to help me put my sewing room back together. Lucy brought the rest of the pumpkin-walnut loaf, and I made a pot of coffee. Before we started working, I showed them my notepad with the translation of the quilts.
Birdie shook her head. “Looks can really be deceiving. When I saw him at the wake, Dr. Godwin appeared to be such a devoted husband, so respectable.”
Lucy frowned. “What I can’t figure out is how he had the nerve to show up at the wake of someone he killed. I mean, that’s cold.”
“No doubt he’s been feeling a lot hotter since Detective Beavers picked him up last night.”
We freshened our cups of coffee and carried them to my sewing room. Cardboard cartons full of jumbled-up cotton material were stacked against one wall, and in the middle of the floor, where I dumped them yesterday, were more piles of fabric, some of which I’d used in my Civil War quilt—a tiny print in double pink, black squares marching across a gold background, purple paisley, and a green leafy print.
Lucy picked up the fabrics from the floor, Birdie carefully folded them, and I stacked them on the shelves according to color. All the miscellaneous items like rulers, scissors, pins, and needles were collected in an empty cardboard box to be sorted through later.
When the floor was cleared, Lucy emptied the rest of the cartons and we sorted fabric. Half-yard cuts and under went to Birdie to fold, while Lucy managed to fold the larger cuts.
“Look what I found.” Lucy pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from a twisted chunk of blue and tan shirting. The composite drawing of the quilt thief wearing a ski mask fluttered to the floor. The only distinguishable features were the odd little eyes and a physical description: Caucasian, 5’5”to 5’8” stocky.
I picked up the drawing. “This isn’t much to go on, but there’s enough to know Godwin must have gotten someone else to steal Claire’s quilt from the quilt show. He is, after all, around six feet tall and slender.” I put the paper next to my notepad in the kitchen.
By noon the three of us had cleaned and organized my sewing room. I stood back to admire our hard work. We’d sorted through all the sewing notions in the cardboard box. Scissors, rotary cutters, my collection of antique pin cushions, thimbles, needles, binding clips, and dozens of other sewing accessories had been put back in their proper drawers.
My reclaimed fabric sat neatly folded on floor to ceiling shelves along one wall. One whole shelf was filled with just the blues (I have a weakness for blue), from robin’s egg polka dot to a deep indigo fish batik made in West Africa. The year before I painted the roo
m a soft dove gray—a nice neutral background for the rainbow hues of my fabrics. The whole effect was calm but cheerful. “My sewing room has never been so neat.” I smiled.
“What do you need to clean up next?” asked Lucy.
“I did my bedroom yesterday, so I guess the kitchen is the only big project left.”
“Well, we might as well jump in as long as we’re here.”
Lucy put down the last piece of fabric. “Let’s eat first. I’m hungry. Do you have anything, or shall we run down to the Sandwich Shoppe?”
“How about leftover barbeque?”
By three in the afternoon, my friends were gone, my house was restored, and I was relaxing in the living room with a can of Coke Zero, wondering how Beavers was doing with Godwin. Bumper jumped up on my lap purring, and settled down for a nap while Arthur put his chin on my knee, asking for some attention. I closed my eyes and smiled, thinking life couldn’t get any better than this. Did I really need a man? Animals were much safer and, in my experience, a lot more loyal.
As I scratched Arthur behind the ears, I remembered Dixie was supposed to come over this evening to pick up the appliquéd flower basket wall hanging I promised to give to the charity auction for the Blind Children’s Association. I really needed to get out of my work clothes and take a shower before she came, but I didn’t have the energy to clean up right then. I figured she’d call at some point to get directions, at which time I’d freshen up. Then I fell asleep.
I woke to Arthur growling softly and somebody knocking on my front door. “Okay, Arthur, I’m awake now.” I got up, turned on the porch lights and strained at the peephole to see who it was.
Dixie stood looking at the door and blinking rapidly. I’d never given her my address. How did she find me?
I turned off the alarm and opened the door. “Hi, Dixie. Come on in. I apologize for my appearance, but I thought you’d call first for directions. How did you know where I live?”
Dixie wore a long-sleeved blue shirt and polyester trousers. As she strode into the living room, she smiled. “Your check. Your address and phone number were on the check you gave me. All I had to do was look up your address on Google maps, et voilà! If you don’t want anyone to know where you live, you shouldn’t publish the information on your checks.”
Her last remark struck me as a little short of friendly, if not downright snarky. I walked toward the kitchen. “Well, how about some tea?”
She followed me as far as the island. “Fine.”
I put on a pot of water. “I’ll just go and get the quilt.” Arthur followed me down the hall to my sewing room and back to the kitchen, never moving more than two inches from my legs. I realized Arthur hadn’t been out in the backyard since early afternoon, so I opened the back door for him, but he just sat at attention and looked at me.
“Go outside, Arthur, and be a good boy.” Arthur didn’t move. “Go on.” I shoved him outside in the dark and closed the door.
While I made the tea, Dixie sat at the island and admired my quilt. Then she held up the composite drawing of the thief sitting on the counter. “Do you mind if I ask what this is? Looks pretty official.”
I told her about the drawing, hoping she couldn’t see my notepad sitting next to the picture with the translation of the quilts and my commentary. Poor Dixie. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her Godwin was a murderer. His behavior had already caused Claire to withhold a huge gift of money to the Blind Children’s Association. Who knew if BCA could survive the scandal of Godwin’s arrest? If not, Dixie would be out of a job and in these difficult economic times and with her impaired vision, she might not easily find another.
When she put the drawing back, she glanced at my notepad. Before I could stop her, she brought it close to her face to read.
Dixie looked at me with a strange expression.
“I’m sorry, Dixie. I didn’t want you to see those.”
“Since when do you read Braille?”
“I don’t really. I just downloaded a copy of the alphabet from Google and . . .”
Wait. Dixie was looking at snippets of whatever text I gleaned from Claire’s baby quilt and my comments on the text. Nowhere on my notepad did I make any reference to Braille. So how did she know those short phrases were a translation of the Braille on the quilt?
Dixie squinted at me from behind her thick lenses, her eyes blinking wildly.
And suddenly I knew.
CHAPTER 34
Sometimes a quilter could get so focused on stitching together small pieces of fabric she’d need to take a step back and look at her composition as a whole. She would need to evaluate how each element came together to make the overall design. One way she could do this would be to look at her quilt through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. The resulting image of the quilt was so reduced in size she could see her creation from an entirely new perspective. Flaws in the design just popped out and screamed to be fixed.
I’d been looking at Claire’s murder too closely. Each element of the puzzle was like a small patch with its own unique color and details. I needed to take a step back and look instead at the overall design. I missed some obvious inconsistencies, starting with the composite drawing of the thief. Godwin wasn’t a fit, but Dixie was. Like the wrong end of binoculars, the thick lenses of her glasses made her eyes appear to be smaller than normal—just like in the drawing.
I should have kept my big mouth shut and sent Dixie home, but the words flew out before I could stop them. “It was you. You stole the quilts.”
Dixie stopped blinking and tilted her head, focusing on me with an unsettling stare. Chills tickled the hair on the back of my neck as she got up and came around to my side of the island.
I continued talking, figuring out the details as I went along. “You were the one who received the baby quilt from Claire for the auction. When you handled it, you must have realized the knots were Braille. So you read the quilt and discovered Claire was pregnant with Godwin’s baby. Godwin wanted her to get an abortion, but she was going to keep the baby. She was also going to expose Godwin and cancel her bequest. You realized Godwin wasn’t the only one who’d be ruined. If he went down, so would the Blind Children’s Association.”
Dixie licked her lips and slowly weaved her head from side to side. “No . . .”
Like an idiot, I kept talking. “You couldn’t let that happen, so you threw the baby quilt in the Dumpster. Then you learned one of Claire’s quilts was displayed in the quilt show. You had to find out if that one also contained Braille.”
Dixie’s head was still moving from side to side. “You can’t prove any of this.”
If I were smarter, I would’ve stopped talking, but my mouth got in the way of my better judgment. “Yes. I can. There was a woman at the quilt show who kept touching Claire’s quilt. There are witnesses who will be able to identify you as that woman. You kept touching the quilt because you wanted to read the Braille. When you found out Claire wrote about her affair with Godwin in her quilt, you were compelled to get rid of it. So you came back the next day and stole it. You also grabbed a couple of other quilts to make it look like a random theft. You tried to disguise every feature that might identify you, but you couldn’t disguise your eyes.” I waved the composite drawing in front of her.
Dixie made a low, growling noise in her throat. “You think you’re so clever.”
Yes, I did. I was too impressed with my own cleverness to recognize the danger gathering all around me. “Did Godwin know about the Braille in the quilts? Did the two of you conspire to get rid of them?”
“Godwin didn’t know anything, and he wouldn’t have figured it out. He’s not that smart.”
“So you decided to steal the quilts all on your own?”
Dixie curled her lip and opened and closed her fingers. “Have you ever wanted something so much you’d do anything to protect it? I never told Godwin about the quilts because he would’ve fired me if he realized how much I knew about his personal life. I too
k a chance and told him I knew about Claire and the baby. I didn’t tell him how I knew. I warned him if he ever tried to fire me, I’d go straight to his wife. It was job security.”
“Godwin’s been arrested, Dixie. There’s nothing more to protect. He’s going to go to jail for murdering Claire. You’ll have to answer for stealing the quilts.”
Dixie brushed past me and headed for the stove. I watched as she reached over to the drawer next to the stove and pulled out a Henckels with a seven-inch serrated blade. “You little witch. I tried to warn you to back off, but I guess you were just too dumb to take a hint.”
I looked at her hand and remembered the knife in my pillow and the note. My mouth went dry. “My God, Dixie. You know where I keep my knives. This isn’t the first time you’ve been in my house, is it? You’re the one who broke in, trashed my house, and left the note in my pillow.”
“I wanted all the quilts!”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the knife. “You must have been frustrated when you broke in to Claire’s house and didn’t find them there.”
“What’re you talking about? I never broke into Claire’s house. I didn’t know about the other quilts until you told me they were here in your house.”
“I told you?”
Dixie smiled triumphantly. “Yes, on the phone. When I offered to come get the baby quilt, you told me you were taking all of Claire’s quilts back to the Terrys.”
She was right! When would I learn to think before I spoke? It was a character flaw I’d have to work on if I ever got out of this alive.
“I wanted to find out what her other quilts revealed, to see if I needed to get rid of them, too, but once I got inside your house, I couldn’t find them.”
Dixie tightened her grip on the knife.
Arthur was barking outside and clawing at the door. From the time Dixie first appeared at my front door, Arthur had growled; then he resisted leaving my side, even refusing to go outside. Why hadn’t I realized the guard dog was guarding me?