by Terri Thayer
Eve remained stone-faced. She tightened her arms across her chest, but said nothing.
I had to break through her silence. “I saw Justine that morning, you know. She was in the hall outside Claire’s door.”
That was a hit. I saw in Eve’s eyes that she hadn’t known I’d seen Justine. Had she already considered the notion that Justine might have killed Claire?
“Claire Armstrong was a leech, preying on the weaknesses of others,” she bellowed.
Her blast backed me up a step, as though her words had physical force.
“She’s the reason Justine gambled. She kept giving her money.”
“Tell me,” I said.
With an annoyed gesture, she did. “We borrowed startup costs from her long ago. We paid that money back, but when Justine started gambling, Claire popped up again. She insinuated herself into our lives, always ready with an easy loan.”
Eve fought back tears. I placed a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off. “Justy got in too deep. She couldn’t pay the money back as quickly as Claire wanted.”
“Did Claire threaten her?”
“I’ve got a lot to do,” she said, moving away from me. “Come on, you guys. Look alive!” she shouted at her workers.
“I heard you with Justine on the phone Thursday night. Was Justine afraid? Is that why she stole from you? To repay Claire with the admission money?”
Eve turned to me, and again I saw the face that made her underlings cry. Her fists came up; her body was contorted with rage.
“My…” I began. “My mother borrowed from Claire, too. I know how you feel.”
She threw her words at me. “No, you don’t. You do not.”
She struggled to speak. I watched as her facial muscles twisted with regret and loss. She spit out the words. “I refused to give Justine the thirty thousand to pay Claire back. I could have, I could have sold stock or mortgaged the house, but I thought Justine should learn to be responsible.”
She made the word “responsible” sound like a horrible choice.
Her words dripped with self-loathing. “It’s my fault she stole the gate. She paid Claire and then tried to repay JustEve by playing blackjack. She maxed out her credit cards at the card club. That’s how her mind worked. She was sure she would win the money back. Instead, she lost it all.”
I was thinking quickly, trying to map out Justine’s actions over the last two days. She stole the admittance money Thursday morning. I saw her at Claire’s early that afternoon—she must have been paying her debt. She went to the card club the rest of the day and into the night, trying to win back what she needed. Instead she lost everything and came back to the bar Thursday night, broke and miserable. She called me sometime before Friday morning and died that afternoon.
“Where was she in the morning?” I asked. “She didn’t answer the door when I knocked.”
“You must have just missed her. She came down to work, and I sent her back up to the hotel room. I couldn’t let her near the cash again.”
I remembered the scowl on Eve’s face when I’d approached her. “You didn’t see her after that?”
She shook her head. “I was swamped all day. She called me about two, on her way to set up the fashion show. Said she had found a way to get out from under. When she didn’t show up, I figured she’d gone back to the card club again. She always knew the next time would be the time she would hit big. I thought she was gambling. I didn’t think she was dead …”
“It’s not your fault,” I said quickly, trying futilely to block out the vision of Justine’s body lying on the stage.
“The police said she could have died right after I talked to her.”
If Justine died soon after two, that meant Eve had hours of that awful time when Justine was already dead and she didn’t know it. That nasty, in-between time. Those minutes when you didn’t know your loved one was gone, when you were still happy, or angry, or bored. When everything was the same until you found out, and then nothing was the same ever again.
Mom had been dead for two hours and twenty-three minutes before I knew. She’d already been taken to the funeral home when Kevin finally got through to me. Hours I’d been laughing, drinking with my friends, my phone buried deep in my backpack. Time she was no longer a part of my world but I hadn’t known. I hated those hours.
Eve had been running her business and then at the fashion show, organizing the models. She’d probably spent that time furious at Justine, who was already dead. Eve would come to hate those hours, too.
She stopped talking, rubbing her eyes. Her body sagged into a comma shape as though it took too much effort to keep herself erect.
Did I sense relief, too? Relief that she wouldn’t have to deal with a sick partner anymore.
She read the question in my eyes. She straightened her spine and looked me full on. “Justine has ruined the business, pure and simple. The cash she stole was money already spent. JustEve Productions is not going to survive this. I have to try and recoup some of the money. That’s why the show is still open. I will make good on all her debts if it’s the last thing I do.”
A large bang startled both of us, sending Eve a foot straight in the air. The two boys were faking a duel with the pipes from the quilt stands, the metallic noise echoing in the empty space. Eve took a step toward them, her face tightened into a scowl. I put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“Eve, wait. There are still some things we need to figure out.”
Eve turned to me. “We?” she snarled.
I took a step back. “Someone killed Claire and Justine—don’t you want to know who?”
Her face turned bright red, fists clenched at her side. She leaned in close to me, her voice low and shaking with intensity.
“I don’t have the luxury of speculating, Dewey. Justine left me with a fifteen-thousand-dollar bill for the convention center rent, concessionaires that need to get paid, vendors who are threatening not to show up tomorrow.”
Tears were streaming down her face. She made no effort to stop them. Did she even know she was crying? I’d had days like that after my mother died when weeping arrived without warning. Tears that barely touched your skin. Tears with their own agenda.
“I’ve got eight employees to pay,” Eve continued. She ticked off each item on her fingers. “Two hundred people with tickets to a fashion show tonight that isn’t going to happen. I’d love to worry about what happened to Justine. Unfortunately, I’ve got to clean up this mess she made.”
“I’m sorry, Eve. I need to find out what happened.”
“Well, you will have to do it without me. I don’t care about Claire Armstrong and I’m finished with Justine Lanchantin. Finished.”
Eve stalked away, barking at the workers. I backed to a corner of the room, feeling useless and in the way.
Eve said Justine had paid Claire. Where was that money? Thirty-thousand dollars, in mostly twenties, was no small bundle. Had the killer taken it?
“Dewey, lost in the quilts?”
I’d been staring at a quilt that Eve’s boys hung while I was standing here, lost in thought. Lark had come up beside me silently. “Sorry, did you say something to me?”
She sighed. “Quilters at a quilt show remind me of men when a motorcycle is nearby. You think they’re listening to you but all their attention is on the throbbing machine, or, in the quilter’s case, the layers of fabric, thread, and batting in front of them.”
Whatever. “Are you here to listen to Myra?” I asked.
She nodded. “One of your employees told me you’d be here. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
A blast of feedback shattered the quiet and I looked to see Myra tapping a microphone. She was dressed in her normal somber tones. I thought perhaps she was paler than usual. We’d all been pushed to the max over these two days.
Myra looked around helplessly and the boy in the knit cap stepped forward to help, taking the microphone and pinning a lapel mike on her instead.
Chairs had been set up in rows, facing the twelve or so quilts hung alongside the podium. I counted ten rows with twelve chairs in each row. Eve was expecting a crowd.
“Let’s get our seats,” Lark said. “Then we can look at Claire’s quilts.”
We found two empty chairs at the back. Lark laid her bag down.
“Hey, nice.” I pointed at Lark’s QP logo tote.
“I couldn’t resist those batiks. I bought five yards of every one.”
“Great.” With her high profile, our bag would get noticed. That wouldn’t hurt booth sales. That should make Myra, as the new owner, happy.
About a dozen quilts were hung. Lark and I strolled past the exhibit.
“Your sister-in-law told me I could find you here,” Lark said.
“She did?”
“She thinks you ought to do a piece for my show.”
“I bet she does.” Anything to make me more uncomfortable. After the fashion show fiasco, I wasn’t about to let Kym talk me into anything else.
Lark’s eyes cut over to me. She started to speak, but I interrupted.
“I’m really not interested,” I said.
“Dewey …”
“No way.”
Lark turned away, obviously ticked off. I could live with that.
“So what do you think?” Myra asked, approaching us from Lark’s side as we faced a quilt entitled “Soaring.”
“The quilts are marvelous, Myra. Quite a body of work.” I felt like a bit of a liar, not really knowing what I was talking about. Myra didn’t seem to care.
I needed to make sure she didn’t bring up buying my shop. I pulled on her sleeve and took her aside. Lark continued to walk past the display.
“Myra, your announcement—it’s not about the shop, is it? I mean, I haven’t told my employees and we need to talk …”
“Myra,” Lark drawled. “How would you like to be on TV?”
Lark looked at me over Myra’s head as she asked. I guess I was supposed to be upset that it was Myra going to be on her show, not me.
“Love to.” Myra’s eyes snapped across the room where Eve was tapping her watch. Myra said, “Dewey, don’t worry. Take your seats.”
Lark and I were barely seated when Myra began talking. I felt my stomach start to clench. I took in a deep breath, trying to relax.
“Good morning. My name is Myra Banks. I’ve been Claire’s assistant for the past fifteen years. If you’ve taken one of Claire’s classes, you know me as the classroom aide. I was the one who pressed your blocks, measured your seam allowance.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Unstitched your mistakes.”
The audience laughed. I moved up on my chair. Would she mention QP? Lark yawned, her delicate hand covering her mouth. I heard her jaw snap as she stifled another. I felt the chill coming off her toward me.
“Claire and I worked closely over the years,” Myra said. “Indeed, there were times when we worked as one person. I tell you this to assure you that nothing will change with her death. I will keep the Claire Armstrong look alive.”
She hadn’t been as close to Claire as she thought. She hadn’t known about WGC, the lending company.
Myra took a step away from the podium. All crowd noises had stopped. There was no shuffling of feet, no coughing, no asides between friends. Every eye was on her as she walked across in front of the display. She swept her hand, taking in all the quilts hanging around her.
“Instead of ‘Come Quilt with Claire,’” she emphasized, “look for the books and patterns you love under the name ‘Myra Creates.’ My new company will be based here in San Jose.”
I leaned forward, my stomach suddenly in knots. Did she mean Quilter Paradiso? I tried to catch her eye without success. I shook my head, just in case she looked my way.
Harsh whisperings started in front of me. Myra didn’t seem to notice the protests. She looked at the audience expectantly, the look on her face like a toddler who’s just used the potty, oblivious to the fact that only her parents cared.
“Can you believe this?” I heard someone mutter.
Myra was still smiling as though there was no animosity building in the room. She started down the line of quilts, touching each one and studying it.
“The best part of this is that even though our beloved Claire is no longer with us, her quilts will go on and on. Just look for them under my new name, ‘Myra Creates.’
She was like an author on a talk show who couldn’t stop repeating the name of her book. Myra didn’t get that people were getting angrier by the moment. I heard someone mutter, “What was wrong with the old name?”
“Her boss isn’t even buried yet. This is low.”
“Taking credit for Claire’s ideas. Who does she think she is?”
“Myra, you’re no Claire,” a woman with a Boston accent shouted from the back of the room. The way she pronounced Claire was broad and flat and sounded like an accusation.
“You’ve got your nerve,” she continued.
Myra stood in front of a pink and blue quilt, the geese designs spiraling off the edge, and pointed. “This is a particular favorite of mine. I will re-release the pattern in the next few months.”
Chairs scraped back, and people stood to leave. Myra was lost in her quilts, looking at each one as though it was the first time she’d seen it. The noise in the room was growing less and less friendly.
“Leech,” someone shouted. “Fraud!”
At that invective, Myra seemed to tune back in. She turned quickly to see who said it and tripped over the foot of the quilt stand. She lost her balance and grabbed hold of the quilt to steady herself, but her momentum was too much. I heard a ripping sound. To our collective horror, the quilt gave way, tearing off the crossbar, leaving only the top border still on the bar. Myra was sent sprawling. With a quick stutter, the quilt stand tottered and fell. In what seemed like slow motion, but quicker than any one of us could react, the quilt stand fell with Myra underneath it.
Lark and I jumped up; we were the only ones who moved. We pushed the quilt and pipes away until we found Myra, lying on the floor. She looked dazed.
To my surprise, Buster appeared at my elbow. Kneeling, his eyes scanned the crowd, passing over me, assessing the situation, finally resting on Myra.
“Everyone okay?”
Myra sat up and nodded. “I’m fine. The metal bar missed me by an inch.”
He looked into her eyes, checked her pulse. Finally he patted her shoulder and stood up. “Just give yourself a moment.”
He quietly took charge, directing Eve’s crew to move the fallen pieces out of the way.
“Is she okay?” I asked.
He nodded and pulled me aside. He tugged down the cuffs on his dress shirt and ran his finger under his collar. The leather thong peeked out of his cuff, offering me a tiny thrill. I quickly looked away.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
“She tripped and fell, bringing down the quilt stand. I guess Eve’s boys didn’t put them together too well. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. Had Sanchez sent him to arrest me? My hand went to the notebook in my pocket. The proof that Claire had been lending money. Possibly the motive behind the killings. Should I just give it to him and be done with it?
“I delivered your laptop to the booth. Ina told me you were here,” he said, watching as Myra stumbled. In two long steps, he was at her side.
I watched him as he steadied her, feeling his hand on my back instead of hers. I shook myself.
The laptop was back. That meant I could get the booth onl
ine for tomorrow and give Myra a demonstration of the new system.
Buster was talking quietly to Myra. She seemed shook, but okay. The room emptied quickly, people seeking to distance themselves from Myra’s self-involved view of the world.
Lark crossed in front of me, not seeing me, talking into the air. “Get here now.”
I tried to move past her, but she grabbed my arm. Glancing up, I saw the phone receiver in her ear, looking like a strange insect that had landed there. “My crew’s coming right over,” she said to me. “This is big news. I’ll do a show on Myra and Claire.”
She was in full-on TV hostess mode. Lark let go of me to drop her cell into the QP tote. “Looks like I don’t need you after all,” she said. I saw confusion on her face as she opened the bag wider.
“Hey,” she said. She motioned me closer. “Look at this.” Her voice cracked. She had the look of someone who was not believing what she saw.
She held the bag open.
I couldn’t make anything out. “What is it?” I asked.
“Cash. A lot of cash.”
“What?” I grabbed the mouth of the bag and opened it farther. I could see a dozen stacks, each wrapped with a colored bank strap I knew denoted one-thousand dollars. At least twelve-thousand dollars. “Not yours?”
She shook her head.
“Where’d it come from?” I asked.
“That’s what I want to know. It’s in the QP bag. Is it money that belongs to your shop?”
“I doubt it.” Even on our best day, that amount of cash was not something we dealt in. Most of our customers used debit or credit cards.
This was the kind of money, however, that Justine had stolen from JustEve.
“If it was QP money, we would have stamped our logo on the paper strap holding the bundle together.” I looked closer. “Lark, look. JustEve is the name on here. Justine. The bank deposit that never got to the bank.”
That Justine gave to Claire. There was only one way the money got from Claire’s room to this bag. The killer. I took a step back from Lark.
Lark’s voice rose rapidly. “What’s it doing in my bag? You’ve got to help me. You know that detective, right? Call him over here, make him take fingerprints or something. This is not my money. I want it out of my bag now.”