Ripping Abigail, a Quilted Mystery novel

by Sullivan, Barbara

  It wasn’t until three days after the bee that I found a LIRI journal that Matt maintained during the long night ahead. It contained a full accounting of the events leading up to the capture of the bad guys from his perspective.

  Chapter 57

  Saturday, November 1, 6 pm

  He drove away in an angry silence as I trudged up the cement sidewalk leading to Abigail’s front door. Matt was still upset that I’d decided to go ahead with the bee despite all that was happening.

  Or maybe he was displacing his guilt over Luis. Our guilt.

  Because, maybe Sandra had been right, Luis wasn’t ready for dangerous assignments. He shouldn’t have single-handedly chased after the gang as they swept away yet another innocent Native American girl.

  But then I wondered if I wouldn’t have done the same.

  Three days ago on Wednesday afternoon, when Betty Wolfgang had gone missing, we should have noted Luis’ reaction. He had been hot to chase after Wolfgang then. At that point we should have cautioned him about intervening during a violent act. The better idea was to follow at a safe distance and wait until the situation had subsided. And call for backup. Maybe even a posse.

  But, we’d had no idea what gang we were really dealing with three days ago. We’d thought it was just the Pintos, just a homegrown gang--with violent tendencies, yes, but usually only during specific activities such as initiation rites and after nights of drinking.

  Now we suspected we were dealing with international terrorism. I shoved my ricocheting anger-guilt aside and prepared my face for the sewing ladies.

  Inside I expected to find seven quilters, plus Gloria and Nana. Our oldest quilter was Victoria Stowall, the matriarch of the Secret Quilters group. I wondered if this octogenarian would make it to the bee this month. She was quite ill.

  Age-wise, mine would be the next name on my mental list. Then there were homeschooler Hannah and fashionable Gerry, my two part-time apprentices, a couple of moms in their forties. I related strongly to these two women, and you might think of the three of us as the center of the Secret Quilts—at least chronologically.

  After tonight’s events, some would think of us as the Three Musketeers.

  A counterweight to our middle-aged center was the group of three youngest quilters, Elixchel, Andrea and Abigail. Elixchel was a six-foot-tall, raven-haired, Mayan goddess and Andrea was a five-foot-two undernourished, edgy, pixie lesbian. Abigail was the baby of our group, and it was her quilt that we would be completing tonight.

  I’d worn my LL Bean all-weather coat and matching brown Crocs, but in the large canvas bag I was carrying I had jogging shoes and other things I liked to carry—just in case. Just in case what?

  A curtain moved in the window to the right of the front door. Then the door opened. I finished climbing the steps.

  “Hi, Gloria…”

  My happy greeting died in my throat. Gloria had her angry face on.

  “What’s up?” I said, not sure I was being welcomed in. She just stared, looking grim, her mouth a thin line. She was fighting tears.

  Oh God, don’t tell me Luis has….

  Finally she stepped aside, so I could enter the small foyer. My heart was suddenly beating faster.

  Ahead were the stairs up to the bedrooms. To my left was the small room I knew to be Nana’s—the door slightly ajar and a light within.

  On the right was a small kitchen-dining room space, and beyond it was a larger living room. An arched doorway lead to something I couldn’t see from my vantage. Whatever it was, it sat even further to the right, off the living room. I spotted Hannah talking with Elixchel. They looked grim.

  Finally I turned back toward Gloria, tuning my ears to receive Ukrainian-English. I was hoping I’d given her enough time to compose herself.

  “Okay, out with it. What’s wrong?”

  “Abigail isn’t here, that’s vot’s wrong.” She scowled, and her lips shut tight again. There was a wail trying to get though those lips. Now I was frowning.

  Actually I think I always frown when listening to Gloria. Maybe tensing my forehead muscles helps with the translation process by pulling my ears forward—like a dog listening hard.

  Probably not. Probably I was frowning because I’d received an emotional blow to the chest. It was well after dark. It was her quilt we would sew. No way Abigail would go missing deliberately tonight.

  “Where is she?” It came out a whisper. It was a stupid question.

  “I hef no idea. She hasn’t called. She didn’t tell her Nana anything. She just slip out the door sometime round noon and never return.” Her voice hitched.

  “Have you called her friends?”

  “The ones I know—her homeschool friends. They haven’t heard one peep from her since she went to public school!”

  Gloria walked away into the kitchen, now very close to losing it. She began angrily pulling things out of the refrigerator and otherwise busying herself, mumbling as she did. I listened, noting she was listing the reasons why she could do nothing more than worry at this juncture. And then her worry turned to anger, and she sputtered about how Abigail had been late and missing on and off for the past two weeks.

  Chapter 58

  Hannah came up behind me, slipped my coat off my shoulders and took the large satchel I’d brought. I was so tense I almost didn’t let got of it.

  “What do you think?” I said in an aside to Hannah.

  She shrugged and said, “Andrea doesn’t know where Abigail might be either. Elixchel hasn’t heard from her in a couple of weeks. I’m sure she’ll show up. She’s very rebellious right now.”

  But what if..? Storm trooper butterflies assaulted my stomach. I said a silent prayer that Abigail would be okay, that she’d walk in the front door any minute to join us.

  I glanced toward the small group of women standing around in the living room. This time Andrea’s jagged-cut garnet hair was tipped in army-green and black. Elixchel was wearing tawny sweats with a long-sleeved turtleneck in pearl gray--cougar colors that emphasized her onyx hair and bronze skin magnificently.

  I didn’t see Gerry or Victoria. But there was a new female to meet. I locked eyes with her briefly.

  Gloria continued to set out refreshments, banging cups and saucers, putting on a kettle of water for the tea. I thought I could see the new gray sprouting in her brown hair under the overhead kitchen light. Was she aging before our eyes?

  A hungry shark punched his way into my stomach to join the storm troopers. I would spend most of the night feeding the beast to keep it from eating away the lining of my stomach.

  “I’ll let Matt know she’s missing.” I opened my phone and typed him a short text message.

  Of course Matt turned off all electronics when driving. It’s against the law to use phones while en coche in California, a law I had mixed emotions about.

  Anyway, he wouldn’t get the message that Abigail was missing for at least another thirty minutes. If he checked.

  “Maybe when Gerry gets here….”

  I was thinking but not saying--she should contact her brother, Tom Beardsley. Hannah nodded agreement, as if she’d heard my thoughts.

  The shark swam, the butterflies cheering him on. Bite, bite, bite!

  I bit the corner of my lower lip and nodded to Andrea and Elixchel. I was suddenly feeling totally inadequate. What should I do? What could I do until Matt checked in? I knew the police wouldn’t act until Abigail’s absence sounded more suspicious. I glanced at my watch again, still before seven. Not that late for a thirteen-year-old.

  “Let me introduce you to my mom’s replacement quilter,” Hannah was saying, while guiding me deeper into the living room.

  We approached a graying, late middle-aged woman—maybe in her early sixties--wearing a light blue sweater over jeans. On her feet were some snuggly-looking blue slippers. She wore metal rimmed eyeglasses.

  “Anne, this is Rachel Lyons, our other new quilter.”

  Of course. Gerry had told me this way
back. She was Anne Stowall, one of Victoria’s damaged daughters—the ones that had been sterilized at the insistence of their crazed father Jake, who wanted to end the spread of hemophilia in his branch of the Stowall clan. It was another era for medical ethics, apparently. Or yet another example of the frightening extent of Stowall connections and influence, that a Jake Stowall could force sterilization on his children.

  Except now we all knew that Eddie, Jake’s grandson, was alive and fertile and out there roaming around freely.

  The last time I looked at him he was a cross between male and female, overweight, and dressed like a hip-hop version of an American cowboy. I doubted he was making babies, yet.

  My anxiety increased as we shook hands and Anne started making small talk. I wasn’t sure I could concentrate on small talk right now. She was telling me how much she appreciated what I’d done for Eddie. Huh? I’d shot him. What was she thinking?

  I prayed my face didn’t betray my inner turmoil. With all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, it was a wonder I could remember my name, as my mother used to say.

  My brain was tracking big fish, butterflies, handshakes with messed-up women, terrified Gloria as she banged around her little kitchen…and how many more minutes it would be before Matt finally landed in Escondido and I could give him another problem to deal with.

  Of course, I say the Stowall girls are messed-up—how could they be anything else with what was done to them?—but I really h ad no idea who they were.

  In an effort to slow my thinking down, I took the measure of Anne. She looked like a shy duiker, diving into bushes in search of crumbs left by the other animals. Her nose was elongated and her blond hair stuck up around her head in dozens of little ringlets that also made me think of Little Women. Or little baby birds flying around their birdhouse. Her body was bottom heavy with foreshortened arms forever poised as if to sew or forage. Definitely a duiker—with bird attributes.

  But her diminutive voice made you think pigeon or owl as she seemed to end every other sentence with a purposeless ‘who-who’ sound.

  “I’ve seen you before Rachel, although I don’t think you noticed me. It was in the hospital, when you were down a room from my nephew Eddie, who-who.”

  She was referring to the shooting event that landed both Eddie and I in the hospital; him with my bullet in the fatty tissues of his hip and me with the top of my left ear being trimmed a tad by his bullet. The Gunfight at the not-so-O. K. Corral—Ada Stowall’s front porch.

  The who-who was some sort of nervous tic.

  It was Saturday night and thirteen year old Abigail was out and about in the dark—the day after Halloween. Anne finally stopped yammering so I could actually greet her.

  “I’m glad to meet you too, Anne.”

  Really? At least one of them enabled Eddie to shoot me last month—by giving him a gun. And maybe another tried to drive me off a road. And now it seemed everyone wanted to arm Eddie.

  But probably not Anne…Anne was the middle child of seven. Middle children were usually fairly subdued.

  “Same here. You did a good thing for Eddie, although Mary has mixed emotions about it, and Martha is…well, she’s Martha, who-who.”

  She was referring to her functional sisters. The fourth Stowall daughter, Sarah, was outright brain damaged—or so I’d heard. Despite my misgivings about Anne and her whole clan, this unpretentious looking woman was coming across as someone you could trust. For now.

  I shouldn’t generalize about them, I reminded myself. Before Anne, I’d only met the very elderly Victoria--and Jake and Luke, both of whom had been corpses at the time.

  But Luke had worn his oddness like a coat of many colors.

  So, I should not judge them unkindly, I repeated to my brain. It helped that she was shorter than me. Anyone you can look down upon is perceived as less of a threat--part of that whole stand-or-sit psychology of the animal kingdom.

  Unless it was a little dog. Little dogs bite. Another of my unreasonable prejudices.

  Hello brain. Earth to brain. Settle down!

  Dear God, where the hell was Abigail? My watch still said it was before seven. Had it stopped?

  “I didn’t think you girls quilted,” I managed to say in a normal tone. I think.

  “Well, we don’t like to. We had an overdose of quilting when we were young, as you can probably imagine, with my mother’s obsession I mean. But….”

  She stopped and looked toward the still unidentified room off the living room, and I knew suddenly that Victoria Stowall was probably out there. Victoria, had been recently diagnosed with ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. I was frankly marveling that she was here at all.

  “Well, you catch my drift. We all feel we need to spend more time with mom now, who-who.”

  Maybe it was a form of asthma, she sounded like she was clearing her throat.

  “Will!” I blurted.

  “What?” Sweet Anne was now frowning, big time.

  Even Hannah jumped.

  “Excuse me. I have to make a phone call….”

  My adrenaline-racing brain had finally landed on Will Townsend, who might be able to help us immediately.

  Chapter 59

  I raced into the bathroom.

  It was a reflex. We aren’t supposed to use modern-day devices like electronics at the quilting bees. A minute later I came out. Will wasn’t answering either. My brain continued to simmer just below boil. But at least the visit to the bathroom had slowed down my breathing.

  Back to the introductions, and more about the women I quilt with.

  As I’ve said before, Elixchel (pronounced Elish-shell) is model beautiful, over six feet tall, with long black hair with bangs that circle about her face, enhancing her Egyptian features. Her patrician nose spoke to Rome. Caught in the right light her dark brown eyes could seem to be all pupil. And her cinnamon-bronze skin called up her Mayan roots.

  Elixchel moved with the grace of a jaguar which may be why she renamed herself.

  Born Elizabeth Chavez thirty or so years ago, she decided to rename herself recently to celebrate her Mayan heritage. So she combined the name Ixchel--the Mayan jaguar goddess of midwifery--with Elizabeth and came up with Elixchel.

  We have all agreed to use that name now, although Andrea spent much of the last bee teasing her about it.

  Andrea is the exact opposite of Elixchel.

  Petite, mostly red-haired, as I’ve said, she tips her hair in varying colors--Andrea Kelly is in her twenties and Victoria accurately describes her as the punk quilter in the Quilted Secrets group. Complete with tattoos, nose-ear-lip-brow rings, and army boots.

  Well, not tonight; tonight she was wearing hiking boots. But she was in another pair of baggy fatigues as I’ve stated—the ones with a half dozen pockets all over them—and an Army green t-shirt emblazed with Che Guevara’s face in black.

  She was currently wearing a camouflage jacket over all of this so her tattoos were mostly covered.

  Last month her dark red hair was tipped in various shades of hot pink and purple. This month the tips were green and yellow. So maybe she was using some washable dye that she could rinse off and change to suit her mood. Or match her outfits.

  Both Elixchel and Andrea were taken into Victoria’s home at some time in their lives, but I’m not clear if they were actually adopted. Their reasons for leaving their birth families were very dissimilar. Elixchel’s mom and dad died as the result of a terrible car crash on a trip to Mexico and Andrea’s Christian parents simply couldn’t accept her lesbian status.

  “We all miss Ruth so much, Hannah. Especially her dry humor,” Elixchel was saying.

  But maybe not her right-wing religious and political views, I thought but did not say. And then another thought hit me.

  “Who’ll take Abigail’s place if she doesn’t turn up?”

  Okay that was my second stupid remark of the evening. There would no doubt be others.

  If she didn’t turn up
we’d all be out on the streets of Pinto Springs searching for her.

  In fact, maybe we should be out there right now. Except part of me was thinking Abigail had ditched her very own bee to spend time with her new friends.

  “I will,” Gloria said from behind the kitchen bar.

  “You quilt?” I said.

  “Have for years. That’s why Abigail got into it.”

  A pained expression passed across Gloria’s face and she quickly turned her back to us and shifted plates around in the sink.

  My eyes caught Hannah’s and we shared a moment of concern.

  “Don’t worry, she’ll show up. She’s just asserting her newfound adulthood,” Andrea quipped.

  Surprising me, the second thing the caustic pixie said was, “How’s Luis?”

  I gave them what little information I had, and asked how she knew him.

  “We were watching his tweets when he was over at the school, until he announced he was going private.” Andrea shrugged.

  Elixchel said, “It’s just as well. I was loading my gun and putting my shoulder holster on when I read the part about the attack on the first Luiseño girl. I’d have jumped in my car and gotten myself killed with the second for sure, if I’d known about it.”

  There was a pause in the conversation while we took in her comment. I was guessing she was kidding.

  Andrea was too. She said, “You don’t own a gun.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Because of--” Andrea began.

  “Don’t go there.” Elixchel snapped.

  Elixchel was warning her away from something. I was still relatively new to this group and I looked toward Hannah. But Hannah and Anne seemed as clueless as me.

  I looked at my watch. Five more minutes and I’d try Matt again. On every phone in our house, if necessary. Then I’d try the neighbors.

  I stepped away to join Gloria in the kitchen—actually an open space with a low counter defining it on a third side that acted as a bar or breakfast table. So there was no real privacy, but I needed to ask her what I should have thought to ask initially.