Ripping Abigail, a Quilted Mystery novel

by Sullivan, Barbara

  Surprised, I took a half step back. The ultimate suburban farming family were serving grief in their dining room.

  The mural may have been done to cheer Ruth but also to conceal her from prying eyes.

  A small tow-headed boy shyly opened the front door and said, “Who are you?”

  “I’m one of your mom’s sewing mates. Call me Rachel.”

  Hannah called “Val” from somewhere deep within the house--probably in the kitchen canning veggies—and the little boy took my hand and led me inside.

  An armory of shot guns, rifles and pistols blanketed a wall in the wide hall. They were mostly antiques.

  Observing my observations, four-year-old Value said, “They’re up high so I can’t mess with them. My dad hid the ammo.”

  Ammo. I bet he’d looked for it.

  Okay, what was wrong with this picture? Hannah’s a liberal, right? Probably votes Democrat? Probably hates war and weapons?

  “They were my dad’s. I moved them here and just mounted them for my mom. She’s in there.” Hannah’s chocolate voice said. She was drying her hands on a dishtowel-morphing-into-rag as she greeted me.

  But my eyes weren’t ready for a closer inspection. I was tearing up over what Ruth has suffered.

  “I saw. I was admiring the mural….”

  “My dad did that!” Value shouted joyously.

  “I could have done it!” Another boy, this one older, middle Samuel no doubt.

  “Could not!”

  “Could yes!”

  “Nuf.” Hannah quelled the word-war. This second boy was less blond than his little brother, and a foot taller.

  But capturing my attention finally was Ruth, ensconced in a hospital bed complete with side rails and IV stand. My eyes turned crispy and I wrapped my arms around my body protectively.

  Hannah just observed, letting me adjust.

  All around the still comatose old woman were more objects that clashed with my perceptions of Hannah. The plum colored floral wallpaper held a dozen tchotchke shelves of various natural and painted woods.

  Propped up on the small shelves were vases and dolls and demitasse cups. When I spotted a Nixon for President button on the closest, I knew they weren’t Hannah’s.

  “You’ve begun moving her here?” I said softly.

  We’d drifted a few steps into the room.

  Tossing the rag-towel over her shoulder, Hannah hugged me for a long moment, whispering in my ear, “You’re the first to dare come visit her. Thank you.”

  I was instantly relieved of my etiquette concerns. And the tears brimmed.

  She pulled back and smiled warmly.

  About my height, Hannah is the picture of comfort, with long brown hair, a beautiful natural complexion--as in no makeup and perfect rosy skin--large expressive blue eyes and of course the deep chocolate voice.

  I was sure she could smooth talk her way through a field of jelly fish without once getting stung.

  “You brought her things here and put them all around her.” I repeated the obvious for lack of knowing what else to say.

  “You don’t have to whisper. Let’s go include her in the conversation. I know she’s listening.”

  We moved fully into the dining room.

  “My mom and sis even wallpapered for Grandma. It’s the same pattern she has at her home on the mountains. Don’t you love it?”

  “I sure do, Samuel.” Val had disappeared into the back of the open house.

  It was difficult seeing the hardboiled, tanned little woman I’d instantly connected with only a month ago reduced to this near-death still life. About the only thing I recognized was her white hair still flying about her head like a fog being swirled by ocean breezes. Her eyes had retreated even further into her head. Her once regal nose pointed heavenward from this prone position, a sharp spire. The skin of her face was stretched like rice paper over her bones, distorting the shape of her mouth into a grimace.

  I noticed something and leaned closer.

  “Grandma’s eyes are always moving, like she’s watching a dance partner’s steps. She’s just waiting for the right time to stop dancing and return to us.”

  Startled, I turned to look at the new voice behind me, this one caramel.

  “You must be Deborah.”

  She of the scolding older sister’s voice, I thought but didn’t say. I knew her to be ten. I didn’t know she had such piercing eyes. Nor that she was almost as tall as her mother and thin as a beanpole.

  She was wearing a colorful floral peasant blouse and striped Capri tights and below them, knee socks knitted one-handed by two drunken clowns. None of the colors she wore had anything to do with each other, but they were all happy.

  I won’t bother to describe how the rest of us were dressed except to say we were wearing boring solid colors in various shades of camouflage.

  I was going right home after this and revisiting my wardrobe.

  Deborah said authoritatively, “Right, and this is my middle brother Samuel. Value has just done another disappearing act. We’ve had to banish him because he’s into counting now and constantly reciting number combinations. This week he’s counting in twos. And you’re the lady who saved Eddie.”

  Samuel piped up, “I can count in any’s.”

  “I…” started to correct her, but she waltzed over my words.

  “There’s no such thing as any’s, Sam. My mom says if it weren’t for you, Eddie would still be hiding in that horrible house, or maybe worse. You were the only one brave enough to go after him and bring him up from his cellar.”

  “His aunts actually…”

  “Of course, I mean his inner cellar, the one he’d spent most of his life in…”

  “Take a breath, Deb.” Hannah inserted, and wrapped an arm about her daughter with a smile.

  “Okay.”

  The alert ten-year-old assumed a pose of silent vigilance next to her mother. Her large eyes were forest green in contrast to her mother’s Wedgwood. And then she turned to watch her middle brother leave and the light filled her forest eyes with gold.

  Looking back at Ruth I suddenly realized I’d taken her hand in mine. I did, didn’t I? Take her hand?

  I frankly couldn’t remember doing so. The last thing I remembered was landing next to her hospital height bed and placing my clasped hands on the sheets. Then I’d turned to be swept away by Deborah’s river of words.

  Hannah interrupted my astonishment, saying, “How’d it go with Abigail today?”

  But she was also glancing down at my odd handshake with Ruth, a slight frown on her forehead.

  I filled her in on the nonsense the various authorities at Pinto Springs High School were passing off as taking decisive action.

  But suddenly, Ruth squeezed my hand. I looked down again, at our clasped hands. That’s when I saw the bruising on her arm.

  “What’s this?” slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. They had moved a comatose/sleeping woman home from the hospital. Bruising was to be expected, right?

  “Oh. Nothing. She’s got some bruises…it’s nothing, really. Probably stuff that happened when she fell during the stroke.” Hannah.

  So there were more? So these bruises were present when they found her? My mind revisited my confusion over the phone call from Ruth a couple of weeks ago. She had sounded so frightened. She seemed convinced that someone was after her.

  Then Hannah switched gears suddenly.

  “Have you seen the news?”

  I glanced toward the darkened television in the living room aimed in the direction of Ruth. “No, should I?”

  “Turn it on. I’ll wait.”

  She wanted me to let go of her mother’s hand. The ten-year-old raced me to it.

  It was an old fashioned analog, probably from Ruth’s home, and it took a full minute to open its cyclopean eye. For some reason, I wondered as we waited if Ruth might want to return to her own home once she rose from her healing sleep.

  It was frankly rather strange th
at Hannah was going to so much work moving her mother’s things to her home while the old woman was unable to express an opinion on the matter.

  But then, Ruth had lived alone when the stroke hit her. Maybe grandma would love coming to live with her grandchildren. I found myself studying Hannah, trying to figure out why she was showing no signs of grief. But I wasn’t necessarily the one she would have expressed her grief with, either. Probably being strong in front of her children, I surmised.

  I glanced down at Ruth—still holding my hand. Finally, I forced myself to break the connection with Ruth, pulling my hand away.

  I did so with difficulty. Ruth’s grip on mine had increased while we were connected.

  “We don’t have cable or dish, so we bought an adapter and now we watch the local channels. But all that’s ever on is Oprah and the news. And now this is on every channel.” Deborah the disapproving.

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  “It’s nonstop.” Hannah added as I tried to absorb what I was seeing on the television.

  “What is it? Are we at war? With…China?”

  “Certainly looks like it, doesn’t it.”

  We were watching a mob carrying sticks and rocks and clashing with Boston police on the harbor docks. The shot pulled back to take in a wider view and in the background I could make out two freighters loaded to the gills with goods.

  The first of them had Chinese characters on its hull. I really couldn’t see the second one, except that it held more of the angry mob on its upper decks.

  Another Boston Tea Party.

  “It’s the news du jour.”

  Her comment reminded me that Hannah once was a newspaper reporter, and now works the farm, and does occasional massages. And of course she was moving toward becoming an official LIRI apprentice.

  Her husband Peter still worked for the Chronicle covering the news beat.

  “Any shots fired yet?” I asked.

  “The ‘Shot heard round the world’--quite literally this time. Started around noon Eastern, and from what I’m reading on the news blogs the world is reacting. The market bounced down four hundred points and then recovered its senses to close about where it started.”

  She explained what I’d missed while taking care of LIRI business—that around noon a bunch of Bostonians had broken through a police barricade and gained access to the Chinese freighter.

  That was when the gun was fired, to draw media’s attention to the proclamation.

  “They’re protesting the delivery of foreign made goods. They want our government to return manufacturing to our shores and to strictly limit imports. It’ll never happen. That’s an Indian freighter behind the Chinese.”

  Hannah shook her head in parental disapproval.

  “You do know that Eddie is in the middle of this somewhere.”

  “No.” Eddie. The mere mention of his name stopped my breathing.

  “Mary called me again this morning about when all this began. She said Eddie’s living with another Stowall cousin in the heart of Boston’s historical district. The family actually works for the Boston Historical Society.

  I thought to ask, “Why is Eddie moving about so? Has Mary or anyone else explained this to you?”

  “No. Maybe they think the cops are still after him about his shooting you. Maybe they’re happy to have him anywhere but here. I frankly don’t know why he isn’t just a complete basket case as a result of his lifetime of abuse.”

  I said, “Well, not his whole lifetime. I mean, maybe the first fifteen years were better….”

  “No. The first fifteen years were probably the worst.” She stopped and stared at me. We both knew none of his childhood was any good

  “Mary’d told me they’ve had him out practice shooting. With guns, for crying out loud!”

  My eyes traveled by themselves to the wall of armament at the Lilly entrance.

  That was when colorful Deborah made the crackup statement of the day—which saved us from the sadness.

  “But someone spilled the Boston beans and warned the cops ‘cause they were waiting when the mob arrived.” Then she laughed uproariously at her own joke.

  Yep. Ten.

  We laughed with her. It was all a bit ridiculous, wasn’t it? The world was here now, not back there two hundred twenty-plus years ago.

  A little while later, as I moved to leave Hannah’s house, I glanced once more toward sleeping Ruth. That was when the final shock of the day struck me.

  I could swear I saw Ruth’s toes wiggling under the sheets and blankets.

  I’d been thinking she might not survive--at the very least, never rise from her silent state. But I came away knowing she would.

  That must have been what Deborah meant when she said her grandma was dancing.

  Chapter 52

  It was after two by the time I arrived home from Hannah’s. When I walked in the front door I found my pet, Wisdom, scratching at his nose with his paw. Fighting a surge of fear, I raced to the back for his medicine and managed to get it down his throat before the sneezes began.

  He retired to his deck post to listen for the wild things he wished he was.

  Then I went to our office and discovered a note attached to my computer monitor reminding me Matt was on a job in Temecula. A solitary blinking light on our message machine caught my attention next. I pressed the replay button.

  Cleveland County Sheriff’s Detective Tom Beardsley’s recorded voice informed me that a body had been found in the woods out behind Pinto Springs High.

  Whose body? Another jolt of fear surged in my breast as I listened to Beardsley’s less than full explanation and a list of bad choices rambled through my tired brain: one of the Indian girls, one of the Pintos gang members, Abigail..?

  Finally his message told me it was another of the Pintos gang members, a boy. Thankfully not Abigail, or another Indian girl.

  Then I began wrestling with whether it was any of my concern.

  Again, Tom Beardsley was the brother of my part-time apprentice Gerry Patrone, who was another quilter with Victoria Stowall’s group. Tom was keeping us in the loop as a friend, not as a deputy.

  I thought Matt would surely have wanted to be there if he knew about it, but of course he was in Temecula. My heart sank. The longer I listened, the more I knew I was making another drive up to the mile-high plateau.

  I left a message on Matt’s phone that I knew he wouldn’t hear until way too late; then I changed into warmer clothes and jumped back in my car.

  I reached the school shortly after three. Some late stragglers were still filtering away from the campus at the end of a long week. It had been a long two weeks of grief and fear, but for now they would turn their minds toward Halloween trick or treating and act like the kids they really were—an activity that would begin in another couple of hours.

  I glanced around for Luis. It had been when Tom had mentioned that Luis was with him that I decided I should make the trip to the campus.

  Behind the school, I crossed a large multipurpose sports field—where Beardsley had indicated the boy’s body was located. The crime scene seemed well-organized, complete with a small contingent of reporters being held at bay by a couple of cops and a strip of yellow plastic. I could see a knot of officers inside the perimeter a few feet away.

  Nearby them, Beardsley was talking with Luis Lewis. Beardsley spotted me and came over to hold up the tape. I scooted under. Luis waved as I approached. I was still wondering why he was here. For that matter, why was I?

  “Where’s Matt?” Beardsley asked.

  “He’s on another job. I tried calling you but your phone went straight to message.”

  “Yeah, crime scene procedure.”

  “What’s up? I mean, you seemed eager to have Matt here, so I came.” I was staring at Luis, who was looking kind of sheepish. Was Luis overstepping his job here, again?

  “Yeah, well….”

  He didn’t finish his sentence, I thought at that time because some of the o
ther cops had moved closer to us. I looked around, trying to look casual, trying to dispel a rising sense that Luis had ensnared me in something I didn’t belong in. I was wishing I could reach Matt for clarification.

  The east side of the high school grounds was bordered by a narrow wooded area that follows a brook, mostly live oak trees and evergreens. About a hundred feet wide, the woods ran half a mile or more from the road at the front of the school down into the neighborhoods to the southwest. The river the woods surrounded stretched for miles from south to north, due to the slant of the land up here on the plateau.

  On the other side of this bit of nature was the wealthy neighborhood the authorities had had difficulty gaining access to during the recent searches for the missing Indian girls, because it was securely gated.

  “Kid’s been tortured, mutilated just like El Hidalgo does,” Luis said by way of a greeting. I stared at him. So, did this make it our business in his mind?

  “We don’t know that for sure…” Beardsley.

  Great. So was Luis fantasizing?

  “Yeah, well I’ve been researching Southern California gangs, and what those ME photographers were describing as they left was just like the stuff I read about the Tijuana gang that’s threatening….”

  “Uh, maybe it would be best if we kept speculation to a minimum for now.” Me. I was losing my calm. So was Tom.

  Our young apprentice finally noticed the frown on the detective’s face and shut up.

  But now I was thinking, Tijuana? A Mexican gang is active up here?

  I had heard about El Hid somewhere recently. So was this the same as the El Hidalgo Luis just mentioned? I wanted more info on them, like were they rivals of the Pinto Springs gang? But this was not the time or place. The ME’s people were coming and going. Which gave me an idea. I began fingering my camera, already hanging around my neck. I had my backpack full of PI tools, as well.

  “Where’s the body?” Me.

  “Back a ways, over there,” Beardsley answered, indicating the direction with another nod of his head. “ME’s with him now.”

  “Do they have an ID on him yet?” Me.

  “His wallet says he’s Angel Jesus Escudero. The kid was a Pintos. His parents are over to the left, talking with Learner.” Beardsley.