Quilt by Association

by Arlene Sachitano

  "How are you feeling?” Phyllis asked. “I came over as soon as I heard."

  "Mavis and I have been remiss, as you can see—yours are the first flowers,” Aunt Beth said.

  "Just out of curiosity, how did you find out I was here? I mean, I checked in during the middle of the night."

  "If Joseph's across-the-street neighbor hadn't been worried about him and called, I wouldn't have known,” she said, the smile leaving her lips. “That, and the fact Joseph was a no-show again today. I don't mind sharing that I'm really starting to get worried about the boy. His neighbor was afraid something had happened to him, and knew he worked at Little Lamb. Her concerns, coupled with my own, caused me to call the police when I'd hung up.

  "I'm sorry you were hurt, Harriet, but I have to say I was relieved the dead man they took from that house wasn't Joseph."

  "Did you know the dead man?” Harriet asked.

  "I'd never even heard of him,” Phyllis said. “And I hope the same is true of Joseph."

  Harriet knew it wasn't but decided there was no point in worrying Phyllis any more than she already was. Besides, the flowers were beautiful.

  "Can I get anyone some coffee or tea?” Aunt Beth asked. “I'm going to the cafeteria."

  Phyllis and Mavis put in their orders, and Aunt Beth left to get them.

  "How are you ladies coming with your quilts for the auction?” Phyllis asked.

  "The usual,” Mavis said. “We're behind where we'd like to be, but we'll pull it together by auction time."

  "I don't know how the Stitches are doing,” Phyllis admitted. “I missed our last meeting because of Joseph.” She looked at her hands in her lap. “He's left me in a real pickle, that boy."

  "It'd be a lot easier on all of us if this year's organizing committee hadn't decided on this dog theme nonsense. We'd get a lot more money for the quilts if we'd done it like we always have, with any design being acceptable,” Mavis complained, not for the first time.

  "The last block design the Stitches were looking at was pretty ridiculous, if you ask me,” Phyllis looked up when she said this but went back to studying the gold signet ring on her right pinkie finger. “A bunch of dog bones,” she added.

  Harriet exchanged a glance with Mavis, but she didn't let on that the dog-bone design meant anything to her.

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  Chapter 31

  "You didn't let on?” Aunt Beth asked, even though Mavis had indicated they hadn't, when they recounted the discussion they'd had after Phyllis had gone back to work. “I talked to Lauren yesterday,” she continued, “after we got home from pizza and before all this. She said she was hidden behind a desk, fixing a loose wire, when Glynnis and Frieda came into the office. It was just as we suspected—they looked around and made sure no one was looking, or so they thought, and then they went through Sarah's bag."

  "We knew they had to be doing that,” Mavis said. “But somehow, I'm still shocked."

  "Is it shock or outrage?” Harriet said. “I hate that we have to spend so much, or even any, time on all this subterfuge."

  "Who are you, and what did you do with my niece?” Aunt Beth asked. “You middle name is Intrigue—or am I mistaken?"

  "I may like a good puzzle as much as the next guy, but not where our quilts are concerned,” Harriet protested.

  "Be that as it may,” Aunt Beth said, “it's where we find ourselves, so we need to do our parts to make sure the Threads retain their dominance in the event."

  "Can I be dominant tomorrow?” Harriet asked. She yawned. “I think I need a nap."

  As if on cue, Nurse Heather came into the room.

  "Time for our patient to get some rest,” she said in a cheery voice.

  "Is this place bugged?” Mavis asked.

  Nurse Heather raised her eyebrows and tilted her head slightly to the side.

  "Of course it is.” Mavis answered her own question.

  "We prefer to think of it as patient monitoring,” Heather said.

  "Come on, Mavis,” Aunt Beth said. “We need to make sure everyone who needs to has a decoy dog-bone block on display. Besides, we need to catch the rest of the Threads up on last night's doin's"

  "We'll be back in a couple of hours, honey.” Mavis gathered her bags and followed Beth out of the room.

  Harriet fell into a dreamless sleep that ended when a doctor she'd never met came in an hour and a half later to check her progress.

  "Hi, I'm Doctor Eisner."

  Harriet noted his blond hair, brown eyes and stocky build and the irrational thought he was the polar opposite of Aiden came unbidden to her mind. It has to be the drugs, she thought. That and the fact he looked as young as Aiden, if not younger, if that was possible given the man had to have at least eight years of college and medical school and all that other stuff doctors had to do.

  "How are you feeling?"

  "Better, I think.” She gasped when he touched her lower back.

  "That's what I thought, still pretty tender."

  "Only when I breathe,” she said with a weak smile.

  "Well, you're smiling, that's a good sign. I've looked at all your scans, and you have a nasty bruise on your kidney, but it doesn't appear to be lacerated. I'm keeping you one more day to stabilize your fluids and control the load on your kidneys. And I'd like to see the blood in your urine gone before we let you go.

  "Your ankle looks like a straightforward sprain, but since your reputation precedes you, we're going to put you in a non-walking cast for a week that will insure you stay off it, and at the same time give your kidney time to heal. I'm serious—you have to rest."

  The smile froze on Harriet's face, and she didn't say anything for a minute.

  "That's good news,” Dr. Eisner said. “If you'd been hit any harder, we'd be in recovery right now, talking about how you were going to live with one kidney."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to seem ungrateful. I've just got a lot of work to do, and this isn't going to help.” And I need to find out who did this to me.

  "I'll be back to see you tomorrow. Get some rest. The nurses can give you pain medication if you need it. Just use your buzzer."

  "Thanks,” she said and yawned, sleepiness once again taking control of her body.

  "If you follow our advice, stay off your foot, control your liquids, and get plenty of rest, in a few weeks, you'll be as good as new."

  Harriet was asleep before he'd finished his warning.

  The doctor was serious about Harriet getting rest, and although she used every argument she could come up with to change his mind, he prevailed. He cut her visitation time to ten minutes per hour every other hour for the duration of her stay. Aunt Beth and Aiden both grumbled about being excepted from those limits, but the doctor was adamant.

  Just as he'd said, Harriet was there for another full day, and had to admit she did feel more rested as a result of his strict policy. Nurse Heather told her she would have probably been there another two days otherwise.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 32

  An unmarked police car was parked in Harriet's driveway when Mavis pulled up to the studio door. She and Beth had decided the Town Car was better suited than Beth's Beetle to transport their patient home.

  Harriet was maneuvering out of the car and onto her crutches when Detective Morse got out of the unmarked and approached her.

  "How are you feeling?"

  "Like you care?” Harriet snapped.

  "She's doing much better, thank you,” Aunt Beth said and glared at her niece.

  "I was hoping we could talk."

  "So you can ask me why I called nine-one-one after I killed Rodney, whacked myself in the back and jumped into the window well?"

  "That's only one theory,” Morse said in a weary voice. “I'd be interested in hearing what actually happened."

  "Come on, honey,” Mavis said as she came around the car. “You need to get inside and put your foot up.” She carried Harriet's purse alon
g with her own and their quilting bags.

  "We put the gray chair and ottoman in the studio,” Aunt Beth said, referring to the upholstered easy chair and its footstool, which she'd gotten Aiden to move from the upstairs TV room. She put her hand under Harriet's elbow to help her negotiate the steps.

  "Your aunt and I figured it would be easier if you only had to climb the stairs at bedtime,” Mavis explained.

  Harriet stopped. “I know you're trying to help, but these crutches are hard enough with one driver."

  Beth released her niece's elbow and backed up a step.

  "Fine,” she said.

  "I'm sorry. This is hard for all of us."

  "Just go on inside,” Beth said. She turned back to Detective Morse. “I'm not sure this is a good time."

  "There isn't going to be a good time,” Morse told her. “There is now, here, with me, while Detective Sanders is in court on another case, or we can wait until later when he's not otherwise engaged and is available to give his full attention to this matter."

  Beth sighed. “I'll put the tea on."

  Harriet hobbled into the studio, carefully crutching to the large gray chair. Aunt Beth had set three bed pillows on the ottoman. She gasped as she tried to lean down and pick one up.

  "Oh, honey, let me do that,” Mavis said and arranged the pillows at Harriet's direction then helped her sit in the chair, propping her injured leg.

  When Harriet was settled, she indicated Detective Morse should take one of the wingback chairs. Mavis and Beth had removed two of the worktables from the corner and created a new sitting area with the gray chair, the two wingback chairs and the piecrust table from the original space.

  "Nice touch,” Harriet said, looking down at the hand-braided circular rug the chairs sat on. Mavis had brought it over from its storage spot in her garage, a product of yet another craft hobby that had fallen out of style, along with the macramé plant holders and painted ceramic geese she and Beth had made in the late nineteen-seventies.

  "We thought it made the area look a little warmer,” Mavis said, also looking down at the rug.

  Detective Morse cleared her throat. “Would it be okay if we talk about what happened?"

  "I'll go check on the tea,” Mavis said, heading for the door to the kitchen.

  "Do you want to start at the beginning?” Detective Morse asked when she and Harriet were alone.

  "There's not a lot to tell. I went to Joseph's, he didn't answer the door, I saw movement in a window, went to look in the window, got whacked in the back, sprained my ankle and had a dead guy fall on me."

  "We can make this easy, or we can make it hard, but I'm not going anywhere until I get all my questions answered to my satisfaction."

  "Okay,” Harriet said, drawing the word out. “What more do you want to know?"

  "Why did you go to see Joseph?"

  Harriet explained that she hadn't planned the stop and had only done it in response to the movement in the lighted window.

  "Who did you see move across the window?"

  She explained again about the shadow, and that she only saw movement in the ground-level window with her peripheral vision.

  "I wish I had more to show for all my injuries,” Harriet said when Detective Morse had run out of questions, “but like I said at the beginning, I stopped on a whim. I don't even know Joseph all that well. I had just been at our friend DeAnn's house. She and her husband recently adopted a little girl, and Joseph is their social worker. We had a question for him, and he's been sort of hard to find, so when I saw the light I thought I'd stop by and see if he was in."

  "You said, ‘we’ had a question. Who're we?"

  "DeAnn, me, the Loose Threads—we,” Harriet said.

  "Does your quilt group always get involved in each other's business?"

  "Keeping in mind that I'm a recent returnee to the area and the group and therefore have a limited amount of data on the subject, I'd say from what I've seen that's exactly how the Loose Threads operate, and also from what I've seen, it isn't just them, it's most of Foggy Point."

  "I'm not from this area, either,” Detective Morse admitted with a half-smile. “But that's how it seems to me, too."

  "With a network like this, it makes you wonder why no one can find Joseph,” Harriet mused.

  "I wouldn't say no one can find him. We just haven't found him yet. It's entirely possible he's just out of town and doesn't know anyone is looking for him. Other than owning the house where the dead man fell on you, he hasn't done anything. Unless you know something about him I don't. Or maybe you'd like to tell me what it was that you and your group were so anxious to find him for."

  "As I said before, he's the social worker handling DeAnn Gault's adoption of a little girl from Africa, only we're beginning to suspect the child isn't from Africa."

  "That's strange,” Morse said.

  "That's what we thought,” Aunt Beth interjected as she carried in a tray with teacups and a teapot on it. She set it on the side of the ottoman that wasn't occupied by Harriet's feet. Mavis followed, carrying the sugar bowl and creamer.

  "We can't figure out why someone would claim a child was from a third-world country if she's really from a depressed island in the South Pacific."

  "Unless Joseph was playing with immigration numbers,” Harriet said. “But I don't even know if that makes sense."

  "Maybe their paperwork got mixed up,” Morse suggested. “Do you know if anyone else in the area adopted a child of the same age in the same time frame? Maybe there's another family out there that has the African child when they were expecting an island child."

  "DeAnn had received quite a bit of information about her child before the adoption went through, including pictures,” Harriet countered.

  "Moving on,” Morse said. “What was...” She looked at her notes. “...Rodney Miller doing at Joseph's house?"

  "Other than dying?” Harriet asked.

  "Yeah, other than that."

  "We already told you about that,” Aunt Beth said as she distributed teacups. “He seems to have followed Neelie here for his own reasons."

  "Which we were never able to figure out,” Harriet added. “The last thing I'd heard about him was that someone had seen him arguing with Joseph in front of Little Lamb, and then he was dead at Joseph's house. What happened in between is anyone's guess."

  "You're sure you don't know anything else about Rodney Miller or Neelie Obote?"

  "If we did, I'd tell you,” Aunt Beth said.

  "What happened to the baby?” Morse asked.

  "Which one?” Mavis asked, and offered the cream and sugar to each person in turn.

  "The one Neelie brought to town."

  "She's in foster care,” Aunt Beth said. None of the women felt inclined to identify Connie as the foster mother.

  "Two people who know each other come to Foggy Point and die within days of each other, you have to believe there's a connection,” Morse said thoughtfully.

  "Rodney told anyone who would listen he was Neelie's grieving husband,” Harriet said.

  "That's great, except there's no legal proof the marriage existed,” Morse said. “And believe me, we've checked. If they were married, they didn't file a license in this country."

  "Is it possible the Neelie-and-Rodney story is simply one of domestic violence?” Aunt Beth asked. She picked up her cup and sipped. “She and the baby were trying to escape, and he followed them here. He kills her, and someone sees him do it, and that someone else kills him in retaliation."

  "Anything's possible,” Morse said. “But, believe it or not, most people who witness a murder actually call the police."

  "Is that it?” Harriet asked.

  Detective Morse raised her left eyebrow.

  "If you're done with your questions, I have a few of my own."

  "I can't guarantee I can answer, but if I can...” She trailed off with a sigh.

  "Okay, first, I'd like to know if you know what was used to hit me."

&nbs
p; "A blunt object?” Morse offered.

  This time both Mavis and Aunt Beth glared at the detective.

  "Okay, okay, I suppose it can't hurt to tell you we think you were hit with a baseball bat. You can thank your friend Darcy Lewis for that.” Morse referred to the pixie-faced criminalist who also was a part-time Loose Thread member. “She was the one who found the bat in the garage behind the house. It was leaning against a set of golf clubs along the back wall. Darcy noticed that the clubs, the workbench and virtually everything else in that bay of the garage was coated with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs."

  "Everything except the bat,” Mavis finished for the detective.

  "Exactly.” Morse picked up her cup and took a long drink.

  "I don't suppose there were any prints on the bat,” Harriet asked.

  "It obviously had been wiped down, but Darcy got a partial print off the end.” Morse didn't look hopeful.

  "That's good, isn't it?” Harriet asked.

  "It looks like it's a child's print.” Morse said.

  "A kid hit me?"

  "Probably not,” Morse said. “The print most likely belongs to the actual owner of the bat. If we could identify the kid, it might give us a circle of adults with access to look at, but unfortunately, there isn't a huge database of children's fingerprints to compare it to."

  "I thought the grade school did a big drive to collect all the children's fingerprints to use in case of child abductions,” Mavis said.

  "Unfortunately, not all fingerprints are created equal. If they aren't taken by someone the forensic lab has trained, they often are unusable—smeared or flattened beyond recognition."

  "That's too bad,” Aunt Beth said. “I suppose almost anyone could have wielded a bat. I mean, any household that has or has had children in it is likely to have a bat and ball."

  "You begin to see the scope of our problem."

  "Have you been able to verify the identification of Neelie or Rodney?” Harriet asked.

  "No. We've interviewed quite a few people, and no one has known anything other than that two people we have in the morgue used the names Neelie Obote and Rodney Miller."

  "This is all making my head hurt,” Harriet said, and leaned that head against the back of her chair. She closed her eyes for just a moment.