"Yeah, and if you believe that, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you,” Lauren said.
"You ladies can go on ahead to the community center whenever you're ready,” Aunt Beth said. “I'm going to wait for Phyl to get here, in case she needs help setting up to sew her binding on."
Everyone knew Phyl could thread any sewing machine with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back. They also knew Beth wasn't ready to leave Harriet alone, even if Joseph was in custody.
"We'll see you over there,” Jenny said as she buttoned her cardigan and picked up her quilt bag and purse. The rest of the group followed, in twos and threes, until only Aunt Beth and Harriet remained.
"You know, you can't make guarding me your life's work,” Harriet said.
"I don't plan on it. But it doesn't hurt to be careful.” Aunt Beth put on her purple hip-length jacket and picked up her bags but didn't make a move toward the door.
"We both know Phyllis doesn't need help getting set up to sew the binding on her quilt. You already threaded the machine and turned it on. What?” Harriet said when her aunt still didn't leave.
"I might as well tell you—Jorge will be bringing you lunch in an hour or so.” She gave Harriet a half-smile and scooted out the door before her niece could react.
Phyllis Johnson came in through the studio door moments later.
"I hope you don't mind my not knocking,” she said. “I didn't want you to have to get up."
"No problem,” Harriet said. “No one seems to knock these days."
"How's your ankle doing?” Phyllis patted a stray curl back into the cotton candy fluff that was her hair.
"It's better. Have you had any word about Joseph?"
"No, but then, there's no reason I would. I know I'm his employer, and he is like a son to me, but in the eyes of the law, I have no claim on him.
"I called the police station, of course, but they were tightlipped. I used to have friends on the force,” she said with a sigh. “Everyone's retired now, and these young folks are so serious. They don't seem to understand how things work in a small town."
"I have a question for you,” Harriet said. “Do you know a woman named Mary Ann Martin?"
Phyllis bit her lower lip.
"I don't believe I do. Should I?"
Aunt Beth had left two sewing machines in the studio when she gave it to Harriet. They were sturdy workhorse models, strong enough to stitch through the multiple layers of fabric and batting one had to deal with when they were sewing a binding on a quilt. In addition, Harriet had brought her own embroidery sewing machine as well as her smaller travel unit when she'd moved in. Phyl sat down at the studio machine Aunt Beth had set up for her and began sewing on her binding.
"Mary Ann and her husband are foster parents in Foggy Point. I thought they might have taken one of your classes."
"Honey, in thirty years, a lot of people have taken my classes."
"Did you do an adoption for an African girl named Nancy Lou Freeman?"
Phyllis deftly turned the corner on her quilt binding.
"Not that I recall. Why?"
"I just found out Nancy Lou was Neelie Obote's name when she was adopted in Foggy Point. This would have been, maybe, twenty years ago."
"Neelie Obote? The girl that was killed at Aiden's? Are you thinking I knew who that woman was and didn't tell the police?” She shifted the bulk of the quilt as she completed the second corner.
"No, I just thought it was a little strange that Neelie had been adopted here and then was involved in adoption abuse and put back into foster care but that you hadn't at least heard about it."
"I keep trying to tell you—I've processed hundreds of adoptions over the years. I'd like to think I could remember them all, but the fact is, without a file in front of me, I simply can't."
Phyllis turned the third corner on the quilt binding.
"I suppose my aunt told you about DeAnn's little girl."
"Everyone has told me about the problems they're having, and I keep trying to tell all of you that Joseph handled that match. We do our best to match children with adoptive families, but sometimes, in spite of all our hard work, the relationship is incompatible."
Harriet was silent for a minute, thinking. Phyllis rounded the fourth corner of her quilt and approached the point where she'd started. She clipped the thread then cut the excess binding fabric, leaving two tails Harriet would stitch together by hand, closing the gap between the start and finish.
"Did you hear the latest?” she asked carefully, watching Phyllis for her reaction. “It appears DeAnn's child isn't from Africa at all. She's from American Samoa. Or at least, that's the language she speaks."
"I told you, I don't know what Joseph was or wasn't doing on his cases.” Phyllis stood up. “I have a spool of thread that matches the binding here somewhere,” she said, and dug in her bag.
Harriet kept watching her.
"Phyllis, I have to tell you, I'm having a little trouble believing you didn't know what Joseph was doing. I mean, we saw you grabbing files and stepping in for your other employee when she was covering for Joseph. I've tried real hard to figure out how, in an office with four employees, Joseph could have run an elaborate adoption scam without raising any red flags with you or Jennifer or your secretary. I mean, he had to have been arranging passports, and airfare, and I don't know what else, and they would all be for places that didn't match the country the child was supposed to have come from."
"Are you accusing me of something?” Phyllis stepped closer to Harriet's chair in a sudden move.
"I'm not accusing anyone of anything,” Harriet said, her eyes on Phyllis's hands, which were concealed under the quilt, which was draped over her arm. “I'm just trying to figure out what's going on.
"I mean, on one hand, two people are dead. One of those two was adopted in Foggy Point. On the other hand, we have a child who is not from Africa like she was supposed to be, and in fact seems to have a family in American Samoa who are trying real hard to find her. Can you see the connection here?"
"I don't know what you're talking about.” Color was creeping up Phyl's neck and into her face.
"I'm thinking both of these situations are connected by adoption—international adoption, at that. And we both know there is only one adoption agency doing international work in Foggy Point—Little Lamb."
Phyllis sighed and sank onto the ottoman. Her hands were still out of view.
"You aren't going to let this go, are you?"
"No, I'm not,” Harriet said defiantly. “Not until I find out who killed Neelie and who took Iloai from her family. Since DeAnn has already contacted the people looking for her, that should become clear any time now."
Phyl's shoulders slumped. “Your aunt always did brag about how smart you were. Too smart for your own good, I'm thinking."
She pulled her hands out from under her quilt. One was holding a slender syringe Harriet recognized as the kind used for insulin. She flipped her quilt across Harriet's legs, pinning them to the ottoman.
The older woman was surprisingly strong. Harriet squirmed as Phyllis bore down toward her with the needle. She wished she hadn't taken her air cast off when she'd sat down.
"If you're going to kill me anyway, can you at least satisfy my curiosity?” she pleaded.
Phyllis glanced at her watch, and Harriet hoped the older woman hadn't seen the same crime shows she had, where they told you that in a hostage situation the best course of action was to keep your attacker talking.
"I suppose your aunt isn't coming back until the judging is over,” Phyllis said, obviously gauging the time. “Okay, it's simple, really. Nancy Lou was one of my adoptions. There are women in Africa and other places who have jobs that put them at high risk of pregnancy and for whom an unwanted baby would be an...inconvenience. We in American have an endless supply of parents looking for infants to adopt."
"So, prostitutes are cranking out babies and selling them?” Harriet asked, her outrage causing he
r to temporarily forget the syringe poised over her leg.
"I wouldn't put it so crudely, but yes, that is, in fact, the situation. I didn't realize this when I first got into the international adoption business. The people on the other end handle that. I just pay a fee, which I pass on to the adoptive parents. By the time I realized what was going on, I was in too deep to stop."
"So, why steal a baby in American Samoa?"
"Two reasons, really. First, a lot of the prostitutes in Africa have HIV, which means they don't have healthy babies. Second, the authorities are always shutting my overseas contact down in one place or another, and he's forced to move on to another part of the world. Unfortunately, he became a little aggressive in his methods for procuring children in the South Pacific."
"That's one way to put it. It seems like he was stealing children from their rightful parents."
"Parents who were willing to send their child away to school at an improbable age, don't forget. And do you really believe DeAnn's child was better off with subsistence farmers or fishermen or whatever it was her birth parents did? She'll have a much nicer life here in Foggy Point."
"Like Nancy Lou did?"
"That was unfortunate. I didn't know those people were adopting a child just to be a domestic. And, well, when I discovered the problem, I couldn't risk an investigation for fear my situation would be uncovered. Surely you can understand that."
"So, you knew Neelie was being sold into slavery and could have saved her from it?"
"I didn't know before I sent her, but yes, I did figure it out when I made a home visit. It's unfortunate, but she really was a troubled child to start with."
"Did she recognize you? Is that why you killed her?” Harriet tried to worm herself into a more upright position.
"She saw me at the shower, and then came to see me. As you might expect with someone of her class, she wanted money, an impossibly high sum. What could I do? She said if I didn't give her two hundred thousand dollars, she would go to the authorities. I had no choice."
"So you injected her with an overdose of insulin?"
"That's pretty obvious,” Phyllis said and held the syringe a little higher. “I didn't know she'd told all to her pimp. That horrible man.” She shivered at the memory. “He came to me with the same demand. I had him meet me at Joseph's—I couldn't have him come to the office, after all, and Joseph's house had the perfect ambush spot.
"He's converted one of the basement rooms into a home gym. I have a key from when I watered his plants when he went to visit his mother, and there's a below-grade basement entry at the back of the house that goes into that room.
"Joseph does seem like the sort who would do something like this. He's always skulking about looking guilty. I've never known what about, though.
"Anyway,” she said, returning to her narration, “I had that creature Rodney meet me there. I hid behind the first door, and when he started down to the interior door I whacked him with a weight from Joseph's gym. I know what you're thinking—how can an old fat lady like me hope to overpower a young man. I haven't always been this size. I used to play women's professional softball. It's how I hurt my hip.” She patted her ample midriff. “More of this is muscle than you probably think, and you know it doesn't really take a heavyweight to knock someone out if you hit them just so."
"And then he got an insulin overdose?"
"Well, yes,” Phyllis said. “One has to be sure they've done the job. And you know, they never look for insulin. It's real hard to detect. I put it in that big vein in his arm. I made a couple of extra holes so it would look more like he was a drug user. Fortunately, you've had so many injections from the hospital, one more will go unnoticed."
Harriet rubbed her thigh on the leg that had the sprained ankle as if she had a sudden cramp.
"Don't worry, honey, in a few minutes you won't feel that cramp or anything else."
Harriet knew she had to time her move perfectly. She was frantically looking for a distraction when Fred started scratching on the kitchen side of the connecting door. Phyllis looked briefly toward the door, and Harriet made her move. She grabbed the edge of the folded quilt and unfurled it, throwing it over Phyllis's head.
Phyllis made muffled sounds as Harriet sprang up from her chair and onto the quilt-wrapped woman, knocking her over.
"What's going on?” Jorge yelled as he rushed inside, throwing his bags of food to the floor and coming over to the women tangled in the quilt on the floor.
"She's trying to kill me,” Harriet yelled. “She's got a syringe."
Jorge grabbed the edge of the quilt and pulled it back, revealing Phyllis's angry face. Without hesitation and with a swing worthy of an Olympic boxer, he landed a punch square in her face, knocking her out and breaking her nose in the process. He flipped the quilt further back and kicked the syringe out of the unconscious woman's hand, crushing it under his boot.
"Are you okay?” he asked Harriet.
"I am now."
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter 40
Harriet was sitting between Lauren and Mavis in a wooden rocking chair in the back room of the vet clinic when Aiden entered, a small dog cradled in each arm. He set a tan Chihuahua-dachshund mix in Lauren's lap then handed a curly-haired black-and-white poodle-terrier mix to Mavis.
"Be right back with Harry,” he said and disappeared the way he'd come.
He returned moments later with a mostly bald dog of unknown heritage. He carefully placed the injured dog onto the special fiber blanket draped across Harriet's lap. Harry had lost much of his skin as a result of being in the bottom cage at the dog hoarder's, deluged with waste from the cages above. He'd received skin grafts, some from a pig and some synthetic, which were beginning to peel as his own skin began to grow and heal. The result made him look like some sort of extraterrestrial creature.
The Loose Threads were into their second week of dog socializing, and so far the project was going well. Mavis's lap was draped with a lap-sized dog-bone quilt that, along with several other similar ones, had not sold at the benefit auction.
Lauren lifted the corner of the quilt.
"I can't believe the Small Stitches fell for the decoy quilt pattern,” she said.
"Well, it serves them right,” Mavis said. “What's really silly is that they're good quilters. They don't need to be copying other people's work."
"Why do they do it, then?” Harriet asked between licks as Harry attempted to wash her face.
"Lack of confidence, I guess,” Mavis replied.
Robin came through the door, followed by Aiden and a coal-black dog with a white cast on its front leg.
"Sorry I'm late,” she said. “I had to file some papers with the court.” She took off her pink-hooded yoga jacket and slipped a green apron over her head, tying the strings behind her. “Okay,” she said, and Aiden gently set the black dog in her lap.
"I really appreciate the work you ladies are doing here,” he said to the group. “The dogs are adjusting better than we hoped. I'm feeling a lot better about their adoption possibilities."
"I have a feeling you're going to have a jump-start on the adoptions,” Harriet said and looked over at Lauren, who was talking baby talk to her dog, Carter.
"Speaking of jump-starting adoptions, I don't think DeAnn would mind me telling you all that Iloai is now back with her parents and seems to be settling back in without lingering effects,” Robin said.
"That's real nice,” Mavis said.
Connie came into the crowded storeroom, whisking off her peach-colored nylon jacket and slipping into her apron. Aiden immediately appeared with yet another small dog, this one another Chihuahua mix of some sort. She petted the little dog, who nestled into her lap while Aiden retreated back into the clinic.
"Did you tell them the news?” she asked Robin.
"I was just getting to that.” She turned to the rest of the group. “Connie here suggested that, since the authorities have had no luck so far in finding
any record of Kissa's birth, family or anything else, and since DeAnn and her husband have already been qualified as adoptive parents once, perhaps they could be fast-tracked to become foster parents, and then eventually, when the waiting period is over, they could adopt Kissa."
"That's just wonderful,” Mavis said.
"It just seemed natural,” Connie said. “Rodrigo and I have been having a lot of fun with Kissa, but we're too old to have such a bundle of energy on a fulltime basis. We'll be happy to just be grandparents again. And who knows—maybe we'll adopt this little girl to fill our empty nest.” She patted the head of her little charge, and the dog wagged her skinny tail.
"Did everyone hear how much Harriet's quilt brought in at the auction?” Aiden asked when he came back a few minutes later to check on them.
"They were there,” Harriet said with an embarrassed smile. “Besides, Jenny is the one who should get the credit for maintaining the reputation of our quilt group, since her design was chosen to be the raffle quilt, and who knows how much it will eventually bring in money-wise."
"They were all a group effort,” Jenny said modestly. The little dog in her lap barked his agreement, which then set off a chain of yips and yaps, requiring the Threads to concentrate on their task.
Aiden came back into the storeroom-turned-dog socializing area when he'd put the last of his charges back in its kennel and the last Loose Thread had left the clinic. He gently pulled Harriet, who had waited for him, into an embrace. He looked down at her ankle, which was once again in a heavy cast.
"Are things ever going to be back to normal?” he asked.
"You mean normal like when I used to live alone? Before my aunt and Mavis decided I couldn't fend for myself?"
"I do understand their urge to protect you,” he said and kissed her. “You do have a way of finding trouble."
"Lots of people who live alone sprain their ankles."
"Not a lot of them have a three hundred-pound woman fall on their sprained ankle while she's trying to kill them, though."
"Whose side are you on?"
"You're right. I feel like a teenager again with those two hanging around, forced to try to sneak a kiss when they turn their backs. And we both know if we went to my house, they'd just follow us. And what's up with Jorge delivering take-out to your house?"
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