by Mary Marks
“I’d be most grateful. Let me give you my address. Just announce yourself at the gate. Say at two? I’ll have tea waiting.”
I wrote down the information as the microwave dinged. Announce myself at the gate? Not unusual for her million-dollar neck of the woods.
I took out the steaming tamales, peeled off the cornhusks, and plopped them on a plate. My mouth watered at the smell of hot cheese, masa, and peppers. I pulled out a plastic container of guacamole with one more day until the expiration date and plopped about two tablespoons on top of each tamale. No use wasting good guac.
One of the best things about living alone was I didn’t have to worry about cooking for anyone else anymore. Aaron and I’d been divorced for years, and our daughter, Quincy, had her own life working on the East Coast.
I savored the tamales. There was something very comforting about spicy hot food in the stomach. Food didn’t make up for the theft of my Civil War quilt, but eating always made painful things more bearable. That’s why I have size sixteen hips, I thought with just a tinge of self-justification.
I reflected again about my Civil War quilt and why so few of the old ones survived. Army supplies were sometimes so scarce soldiers on both sides had to come up with their own provisions. Most families sent their quilts with their fighting men to keep them warm during the bitter winters. Also, groups of women, such as those in the Ladies’ Sanitary Society in the North, got together to make quilts for the Union soldiers.
Those quilts got hard use as bedrolls when the soldiers slept on the ground. Historians estimated that up to seven hundred thousand people died in that war, many of them buried wrapped in their quilts as shrouds.
As I finished the last bite, the phone rang again. It was Lucy.
“Just thought I’d call and see how you’re doing.”
“Lousy!” I told her about the condolence call and the invitation from Siobhan Terry.
“What are you going to tell her?”
“God help me, I don’t know.”
SUNDAY
CHAPTER 7
The next day I wound through the very pricey hills of Beverly Hills, pulled up to an iron gate blocking a long driveway, and double checked the address on my Google printout: 248 Benedict Canyon. I rolled down the window and pressed a button next to a speaker on a pole.
A few seconds later a voice asked, “Yes?”
“Martha Rose.”
There was a buzzing sound and the gate swung inward. I looked up into a security camera pointed at my face. At the end of a long driveway stood a very large, white, colonial, two-story mansion with eight columns in front divided by a porte cochere. Holy crap. Bring out the mint juleps, Hattie. I think I’ve landed at Tara.
My knock was answered by a red-haired maid dressed in a black dress with a starched white apron. “Please do come in, Miss Rose.” She had the same lilting accent I heard on the phone yesterday. “Mrs. Terry’s expecting ya.”
Who has Irish servant girls these days? I stepped inside a foyer the size of my entire living room and easily two stories high. The creamy walls were washed with natural light from a window high above the porte cochere. A red silk Tabriz carpet lay in the middle of the white marble floor. Directly ahead was a graceful curving staircase of dark, polished mahogany. To the left was a set of closed double doors and to the right a wide entrance leading into a living room.
I was glad I wore my good pearls with a silk blouse and my Anne Klein skirt. I followed the maid to the right and tried to ignore the slight swishing sound my panty hose made as my thighs rubbed together. I’d been blessed with a Jewish figure: large bosoms and a smallish waist with abundant thighs and rear end.
Siobhan Terry sat like a small bird in an armchair generously upholstered in blue damask. Her long hair was arranged on top of her head creating a white halo around her face. I guessed she was Birdie’s age, but aside from the hair, the similarity ended.
Aquamarines sparkled in her ears, and her gray cashmere sweater hugged her tiny figure. She looked at me with eyes the color of her earrings and extended her right hand but did not rise.
I wrapped both of my hands around the older woman’s. Her fingers were bony and dry. A huge diamond ring pressed sharply into my palm. “Mrs. Terry, I’m Martha Rose.”
“So good of you to come. Please, sit here.” She indicated a matching chair near hers.
I sat and looked around the room. The blue silk drapes pooled extravagantly on the creamy wool carpeting. Crystals hanging from a massive chandelier deflected shards of light around the room. A seventeenth-century oil painting of fruit and flowers on a dark brown background hung over a massive fireplace. Didn’t I once see this very painting at the Getty Museum? If so, it was worth a gazillion dollars.
The maid wheeled in an old-fashioned tea cart with a silver tea service, Belleek china, platters of finger sandwiches, and fancy small cakes.
Siobhan picked up the teapot with both hands. “What do you take in your tea, Ms. Rose?”
“I prefer milk or cream, and please call me Martha.”
The older woman sighed. “The only way to enjoy it, I think. You must call me Siobhan.”
The maid placed a small plate, fork, and linen napkin on the small table next to my chair and brought the platters of food over.
I felt like a schoolgirl taking an important test I hadn’t studied for. What if I spilled something on the pristine furniture or, God forbid, on the creamy wool carpeting? I looked longingly at the chocolate petit fours but chose instead a small cucumber sandwich and a vanilla cookie because if I dropped either of them, the damage would be invisible.
When the maid left the room, Siobhan put down her tea and looked at me with tears in her eyes.
I braced myself.
“Please tell me about my daughter.”
I felt a rush of empathy for this grieving mother. God forbid anything should happen to Quincy. My own tears would never stop.
I pretended I didn’t know where this conversation was headed. “Well, I didn’t know her very well. . . .”
“I mean tell me how you found her. What did she look like?”
Rats! “Siobhan, I don’t think—”
“Please. I want to know. Did she suffer?”
“I really can’t answer that. When we got there, she was already gone. She was lying on the floor like she just went to sleep.” I was not going to tell Claire’s mother about the vomit around Claire’s mouth and in her hair, or the blood on her hands.
“So you don’t think she suffered?”
“She didn’t look that way to me,” I lied.
“You know”—I hoped to deflect further questions—“Claire was widely admired. She was the best quilter in the guild. My friends and I were so pleased she invited us to quilt with her.”
“I was upset when they told me yesterday a thief stole her quilt.”
“I know how you feel. My quilt and my friend Birdie’s quilt were also stolen.”
“Yes, Detective Beavers told me. Claire had no children, so her quilts are all I have left of her. I think this last one is the best she’d ever done. I’d very much like to get it back.”
“Yes, but I don’t think the police are very optimistic about our chances. They’re more interested in . . .” I stopped myself.
“In who killed her?”
“I’m sorry. Yes. In who killed her.”
The older woman looked somewhere over my shoulder. The blue in her eyes turned to ice and her face hardened. Parchment skin stretched over the white bones of her knuckles as she clenched her fists. “Whoever killed her will pay.”
I didn’t know what to say in the face of her grief and anger. I decided this was one of those times when it was better to just say nothing.
After a minute, Siobhan relaxed a little and looked at me. “How did you get involved in quilting?”
“Well, my grandmother was a quilter. I have fond memories of her cutting out pieces of colorful old clothing and sewing them together to make be
autiful patterns. I made my first quilt for my daughter’s crib. That was thirty years and over one hundred quilts ago.”
“I’m afraid I would never have the patience required to sit and sew like that.”
“That’s a common assumption people make. Quilting has nothing to do with patience. Working with your hands can be a form of meditation. It can bring great peace.” I looked at the other woman’s well-manicured hands and doubted they’d ever done a day of work.
“Would you say you know a lot about quilts after thirty years?”
“Actually, yes. I’ve studied technique, textiles, and quilt history extensively.”
“In that case, you may be just the person I’m looking for. Claire once told me her quilts were her journals. When I asked her what she meant, she said they each have a story to tell about her life. Because you know so much about quilts, maybe you can figure out what those stories were.”
“Well, there is such a thing as a Story Quilt. Those depict everyday scenes from the life of the quilt maker. Each block is appliquéd or embroidered to make a scene of some significant event in the quilter’s life. The pictures are usually quite obvious and simple, like planting corn or sweeping the house. The overall effect is primitive but quite charming. Did Claire ever make one of those?”
“No, but I keep thinking maybe she left some kind of message in her quilts.”
“You mean like a note sewn inside each one?”
Siobhan looked up earnestly. “I don’t know. That’s what I’m hoping you can figure out.”
“Why don’t you tell all this to the police?”
“I tried talking to that young detective, but I don’t think he took me seriously.”
“Detective Kaplan, Beavers’s partner?”
“Yes, I think that’s the one.” Siobhan fixed me with a pleading look. “Martha, I want you to look at her quilts. Most are privately owned now, but a few are at Claire’s. Go back to her place. There’s a key on the side of the house. You can let yourself in.”
I remembered Claire’s neighbor, Ingrid, reaching around the corner of Claire’s house to get the key. “Her neighbor took the key to open the door last Tuesday, when we were there.”
“I know. She called. I asked her to put it back. Take the key and keep it for now. See what you can find, and please hurry.”
We stood.
Siobhan appeared diminutive and breakable, but her gaze was firm. “Maybe the clue to my daughter’s death is in her quilts, especially the last one. I keep thinking that whoever stole Claire’s quilt may also have killed her.”
I bent down to hug the older woman, something I wouldn’t have dreamed possible when I first walked into this imposing house. Bird bones hid under her soft cashmere sweater. “I’ll do what I can,” I said, mother to mother. “I promise.”
CHAPTER 8
I drove back to my house in Encino to change clothes. Peeling off my panty hose was like opening a bag of compressed marshmallows. Instant release. I stepped into a pair of jeans and comfortable shoes, grabbed a blueberry muffin the size of my head and a cold Coke Zero from the refrigerator. You had to draw the calorie line somewhere.
The yellow tape was gone from Claire’s circular driveway, so I parked my white Corolla near the front door. A horn honked briefly somewhere down the street, stabbing the Sunday afternoon quiet. I walked over to the side of the house where the neighbor had removed the key. My way was blocked by an iron gate secured by a heavy steel padlock. I tried to look around a large oleander bush, but the branches were in the way.
I closed my eyes and snaked my arm through the bush and the iron bars of the gate, feeling blindly along the smooth, melon-colored stucco of the side wall. My fingers brushed against something hard that felt like a miniature aluminum awning. I knew what this was: the vent cover for the clothes dryer, just like mine at home.
I hesitated to put my fingers inside a hole I couldn’t see. God forbid there should be a spider lurking there. I held my breath, squeezed my eyelids, and felt around the edges of the vent cover until I found the bottom. I pushed at the little piece of aluminum hanging down like a tiny swinging door and walked my fingertips inside the hole. The key rested on a bed of soft lint and felt cool to the touch. I grabbed it and quickly withdrew my hand.
When I let out my breath and opened my eyes, there sat a fat brown garden spider on a web in the oleander leaves about three inches away from my face. All of its eyes looked straight at me.
“Ewww,” I yelled, jumping away and brushing imaginary spiders out of my hair and clothes. “Ewww. Ewww.” I did the spider dance all the way to the front door .
Still shuddering, I turned the key in the lock but hesitated before opening the door. Did Claire have an alarm? Siobhan hadn’t mentioned anything. I took a deep breath and slowly pushed the heavy blue door open. Silence. Okay, good.
The air in the house smelled faintly like the men’s restroom in a bus station. I didn’t remember any noxious odors five days ago when we found Claire’s body.
The inside of the house was pretty much as I remembered—yellow walls, hardwood floors, generously upholstered white sofa with an appliqué quilt hanging behind. Claire must have loved yellow, because the dining room was painted a mustard color. Beyond that was a kitchen with white cabinets and black granite countertops.
I looked at the litter on the floor from the EMTs. I pushed at some of the paper wrappings and empty plastic bags with the toe of my blue Crocs. Were they allowed to just leave a mess like this?
A faint whine suddenly came from the other room. I froze in place. Another whine, a little louder now. Oh my God, there’s someone else here. I looked around desperately for something to defend myself with and picked up a ceramic table lamp. Then I saw an orange tabby cat padding cautiously around the corner. He looked at me and whined again.
I put the lamp back down on the table. “Gosh, you scared me.” I bent to pet the cat. “You must be Claire’s kitty, you poor thing. Did everyone forget about you? Are you starved?” I went to the kitchen. The smell grew much stronger. I looked around and found two empty cat bowls sitting on the laundry room floor along with an overflowing litter box. “Yuchh.” I looked over the cat. He slowly closed his eyes and regally disavowed any responsibility for the mess.
I found some cat food and filled one bowl with kibble and one with water. The cat made up for lost time while I cleaned the litter box and poured in some fresh sand. Then I went back to the hallway and picked up the debris on the floor where Claire’s body had lain.
Spots of blood were smeared on the wall, probably when they were swabbed for evidence. A gray, powdery film appeared in smudges here and there. Dusting for prints?
I put the debris and used cat litter in the trash barrel outside, came back inside and washed my hands. “Okay, kitty, time to look at quilts.” The cat was too busy crunching little star-shaped pellets to care.
I went back to the living room and over to the quilt hanging from a wooden board with clips behind Claire’s sofa. I remembered seeing this work of art on the cover of Pieces quilting magazine a couple of years ago.
The flowers, herbs, and birds resembled a painting of a garden. When I got close enough, the subtle layering of different fabrics created the illusion of brushstrokes. The light tan background was heavily dotted with Claire’s trademark French knots in dark brown embroidery thread. They reminded me of a pointillist painting. Not wild and generous like van Gogh. More controlled—like Seurat.
I took off my shoes and stood on the sofa, sinking unsteadily into the soft cushion. Reaching up to the wooden quilt hanger, I pulled the wall hanging out of the clips and sat down, sinking again into the downy cushion. The quilt was about three feet by four feet. The label on the back read, Secret Garden.
Secret Garden won a first-place ribbon two years ago and appeared shortly afterward in the magazine. What a privilege it was to be holding this exquisite piece of art in my lap.
I rubbed the quilt between my fingers, searchi
ng for a note Claire might have sewn inside. Cotton fabric was soft and pliable. A piece of paper inside the layers would feel stiff to the touch. Maybe I could even hear it crinkle. I started methodically in the top left corner, feeling through the layers inch by inch.
I closed my eyes in concentration as my fingers explored. There was something very sensual and comforting about a finished quilt. Sewing through the three layers of the top, batting, and lining produced a bumpy texture—a real testimony to the hundreds of hours spent sewing. A quilter left her very essence in the texture of her quilts.
I reached the bottom right corner without detecting anything. If there was a message to be found, it wasn’t on paper. I decided to look for the other quilts Siobhan had said were in the house. If there weren’t actual notes sewn inside, maybe I could decipher some sort of hidden relationship between the different designs or maybe there’d be a clue in the names of the quilts.
Once again I approached the spot in the hallway where Claire’s body had been found. I looked at the space where she’d fallen. What a terrible waste of a young life and a fine artistic talent. A picture of my daughter flashed in my head, and I shuddered. Even though Quincy was grown and living on her own, I still worried about her every day. Eternal worry was a mother’s curse.
A picture of my mother flashed by. She was the exception to that rule. My mother wasn’t very functional and needed to be taken care of herself. She was the reason we lived with my uncle Isaac and my bubbie, my grandmother. They told me my mother was devastated by the death of my father. Had she always been that way—remote and dreamy and disconnected from life? Every time I asked, they changed the subject.
Walking down Claire’s hallway, I passed two bedrooms with an adjoining bath. A quick search revealed no quilts in either room. A third door was shut, and at the end of the hallway was the master suite. I opened the third door to find a well-appointed sewing studio.