And Ruth, who had also sat on the window-side, well, she was distant for reasons I hadn’t yet thought out. Reasons more complex than the simple fact of her age.
“Hey.”
Matt had snuck up behind me, making me jump. His favorite little-boy’s joke. He wrapped his arms around me. I smiled, reached back and ran my fingers through his thick brown hair, sprinkled with gray and no longer as short as a Marine’s. It felt silky and thick. Other women over the years had shown an interest in my husband, had thought he was pretty darn sexy. I killed some of them, beat up the rest.
Matt said, “I found these inside the quilt when I spread it out earlier. The quilt’s pretty, huh?”
“Priceless,” I answered and took a small book out of his hand. It was a diary. As I opened it an envelope fell out on the quilt. I picked it up. It had been opened. “This was inside?”
“Yeah.”
I tucked the envelope behind the diary and flipped to the title page. “Oh, lord. This book belongs…belonged to Ada Stowall.”
“Yeah. And the quilt is hers, too. Says so on the dated label. Sorry to hear she’s dead.” I glanced at him, surprised, as he flipped the nearest corner of the quilt over so I could read it. It was dated April of this year.
The diary was dated also. It must have been written when Ada was a child. I opened the envelope, still wondering how Matt knew about Ada’s death. I certainly didn’t tell him when I arrived home. All I could think about early this a.m. was that I’d barely survived an assault. I said, “Wow.”
“So the billionaire’s wife sends her love and thanks, and a hefty check to research Ada’s death. What gives?”
I quickly brought him up to date on the events of the bee, without elaborating on the weirdness of the night.
He said, “They want to hire us to research this woman’s death?”
I nodded, yes.
“Well, this is a new twist in our career. First potential murder case we’ve been hired to investigate. Certainly the police haven’t asked for our help before. What gives?”
I said, “It seems someone doesn’t want anyone to learn how Ada Stowall died, police included. She was cremated almost immediately after being discovered.”
“Where?”
I shrugged.
“When?”
I shrugged again.
“Who was with her? Who had her cremated?”
I told him the little I knew. Pretty much nothing.
“So you’re basically starting from scratch. Sounds fascinating.” He switched gears, pointing at the quilt. “What’s with that?”
I almost shrugged a third time, but the joke was done.
“They gave it to me last night and asked me to study it. They think it will help me…us…with investigating her death.”
Matt moved to my side, arm still around my waist. “So you’ve hooked up with a cult group.” I ignored his rudeness. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if he was right or wrong. He continued. “So why was Victoria Stowall so upset about this whole thing?”
“Turns out Ada is Victoria’s deceased daughter-in-law. In fact, most of the women are related to the Stowall family. At least peripherally. And I was invited to join them because of our business.
“Okay. But the quilt?”
“They believe it contains a secret. The central design makes it an album quilt—a pattern that is usually used to depict significant events in a person or family’s life.”
“Good to know.” He turned to stare at the open doorway. Leaving. Thinking of excuses to exit, like needing to practice for his next golf game. Speaking of cults.
Golf was as close to a guy-cult as any.
“Beautiful,” I murmured, still mostly caught up in the magnificence on the bed.
He glanced back down. “Yeah. Lot of work, but, research…?”
My eyes moved from one intricate scene to the next, created from bright fabrics carefully cut, hemmed and then appliquéd to the smooth ivory surface. Perfect. It spoke to me as only a quilt…well, no. Other things spoke to me this way, too. Spiritual things.
I muttered, “Research all the symbols and strange topstitching on it. They think there’s some secret sewn on or inside of it. The pictures in the nine central squares are certainly interesting. They think its Ada’s darkest secret, quilted.”
“Darkest secret quilted,” he repeated. “Like the group’s name? Quilted Secrets?”
“Right. Except the name of the group seems to have many meanings. They talked a lot about the history of quilting, how some earlier quilts contained secrets. And…well, we each share a secret about ourselves at the bees.”
“Sounds like women. What kind of secrets?” He made no effort to hide his discomfort, even taking another half step away.
“Well, for my next bee, I’m thinking of sharing some of your strange sexual appetites. Maybe your fascination with belly buttons.”
He laughed. He knew I was too reserved to do that. He repositioned himself next to me, but not so cozy—more dominating. I could read him like a book. He wouldn’t admit he was worried.
Matt said, “So, do you have to hide a secret in your quilt in some way? Like this one supposedly does?”
“No. Well, I don’t think so, anyway.” But now he had me wondering. “Victoria’s quilt had been covered with embroidered symbols, a lot of them to do with snakes, on the doors of the houses.”
Frankly, the thought filled me with inspiration. It would be fun to hide little secrets in my work. So what symbol would I use most often?
Books, of course. Books were central to my life.
He jammed his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. “So they’re all young, or what?”
“No, they’re all different ages. Two other women in the group are older than me.”
Matt rubbed his chin with his left hand, as he always did when he was contemplating. “The first square, isn’t that Adam and Eve standing by the apple tree?”
“Yes. It’s confusing. Album quilts are usually about the quilter’s life and I’m not getting the impression that Ada was particularly religious. Or that any of the Stowalls are.”
“Bible studies! I’m out of here. I need to cut the grass, which means I’m on poop patrol. Next dog, definitely a Chihuahua. Oh, and I got a call from Fred, guess what? Their grandkids are moving to Texas. Trudy is practically grief stricken.”
I looked at him. “Really? That’s hard. Well, we know that feeling.”
This got me thinking about planning our trip to see our son Bob and his family in Jacksonville, NC at the end of the month. Short of cloning ourselves there was no way we could live near all of our three sons as they were spread out across the county. So we do our best to visit each family at least twice a year. But our visit to Bob was very special. He was due to deploy again, soon.
Matt turned one last time at the doorway.
“By the way, you find out whether that guy, Jake Stowall was related to your quilters?”
“Yes. Victoria Stowall is his widow,” I murmured, now deep in thought about the whole strange night.
“And she held a bee a week later? Cold. After the lawn, I’ll take the car into Hector for assessment and repairs.” He slipped away down the hall.
Still admiring the quilt, I reached down to pet Wisdom who was pressed against my leg, staring up at me adoringly—or beseechingly—probably wanting a walk, or dinner…or something I couldn’t understand. His muzzle was almost solid gray now. Our beloved black and tan shepherd had developed bone cancer on his nose a year ago and we’d been struggling to save him ever since. My heart ached for him whenever I looked at the deadly bump growing just under his left eye.
“You could start your research at the County Records,” Matt yelled from somewhere in the house. “Find out if Ada’s related to Adam and Eve. Could be the secret of the quilt.” He was laughing as he went out the front door.
I drifted into our office where we had two computers set up, and pulled up my email. I’d noticed ea
rlier that the list of names and phone numbers Hannah had handed me also contained email addresses…including my own. Time to make a new contacts list. I was thinking of naming it the Bee Women.
No reason why there should be any messages, of course. They were probably all still asleep. I made notes about the bee in a Word file and saved it to my hard drive and external memory stick in a new folder I named Ada’s Quilted Secret. It fit.
I unfolded the Stowall genealogy next. It was huge and awkward--eighteen taped together sheets of paper. I began looking for wall space to display it on, drifting naturally back toward the spare bedroom where the mysterious quilt lay. It was faintly calling to me. There was indeed a large wall we hadn’t managed to cover with photos. Just right for the family tree. But then the phone rang and I dropped the massive printout on top of the quilt and scurried back to our office.
After dinner—your basic leftovers--Matt and I retreated to our office again to review our active cases. Sunday night was like that. Regroup for the week ahead. We were just getting started when again the phone rang. This time it was Gerry Patrone inviting Matt and me to a morning autopsy at the Cleveland County Forensic Science Center. I was so surprised I didn’t respond at first. Finally Gerry continued with her explanation.
“They’re digging Jake Stowall’s body up as we speak. After I told my brother Tom—you remember I told you he’s with the CCSD--about what you saw at the crime scene, well, he went forward with a request to do a postmortem on Jake. In light of Ada’s death, that is. And some other questions we’ve all had for some time. And especially that it was never noted on Jake’s death certificate, what you said about his leg. About the snake bite I mean. They want to see your photos of the scene, Rachel, and talk to you about anything else you noticed. Can you make it? It’s at ten-thirty. Do you know where the county forensics center is?”
Of course I did. But I was waiting for Gerry to take a breath so I could answer her multiplex of questions. I was also thinking about making the return trip up to Cleveland County which sent a chill up my spine. Thoughts of white trucks with bulbars gave me pause.
But now that I knew the two families were related I knew we should learn as much as we could about the Stowalls. And the oddness of Jake’s snake bitten leg seemed somehow tied to Victoria’s constant references to snakes in her quilt. And maybe Ada’s quilt. Adam and Eve and the…snake.
“Let me see if Matt is available, Gerry.”
Matt told me he had a court appearance in the morning and that he was going with one of our apprentices. We’d already worked it out that I would drive his truck until he could arrange a rental replacement for my wagon. I figured he would take care of all that with the apprentice’s help.
I returned to Gerry and said, “Matt’s busy tomorrow, Gerry, but there may be someone else I can ask along. There was a forensic specialist along on our walk in the woods. A Dr. Karen Bridle.” I explained to her about Bridle and her contributions during my recording of the crime scene. Gerry readily agreed. “I’ll bring the duplicates of the pictures and my notes when I come.”
“Good, that’s good. Okay, remember ten-thirty. Don’t forget. And Rachel--could you be sure to give the pictures and notes directly to Tom?”
Of course. This could be his big break. I assured Tom’s big sister I would and hung up. I sent a quick text message to Karen Bridle. Then realized I’d forgotten to ask Gerry about the diary she’d included in the quilt—and her large check. At least since I’d be driving my hubby’s red pickup the jacked up trucker from hell wouldn’t be expecting me in that—that is if it had been deliberate, if I’d really been targeted….
Then exhaustion overtook me again and I slept another ten hours.
Chapter 14: Eddie 4
The monster was back!
He came and went only at night, seeking refuge from the rains. But evil as he was, he was changing to something worse.
Apparently he was afraid he’d be caught. Eddie heard him using only the back door—through which he’d dragged his dead mother.
Thanks to the transformation Eddie was enduring he didn’t sleep like the stoned anymore. Sometimes he missed that. Sleep was better than shivering in your bed in fear.
For two days now Eddie had been trembling on his bed, listening to the nearby noises, vacillating between misery and terror. Luke was violent even when he was sober now, throwing things around and howling obscenities until the early morning hours. His mind was going. There was no telling what he might do.
In the daytime the aunts returned to feed Eddie like little rays of sunshine emerging stubbornly from the gray rains. They were oblivious to the danger. He worried that the aunts would run into Luke. But it was like they had an unspoken agreement, ladies by day, monster by night.
And redhead in the afternoon. Best part of his day.
His big aunt had made him move upstairs a couple of days ago, shouting, This basement stinks!
He concurred. So now he was all set up in the small den on the main floor, off the kitchen. It made him nervous, being so near Luke. But the smell was definitely better.
Luke had left. Out again to do whatever crazy thing he did. He let his mind drift to the sounds of coyotes hunting in the night mist as the sounds within the house subsided.
The pretty, wild-haired woman calls herself his lover.
A sharp noise brought him up from his sleepy thoughts. Luke was back in the house, in the kitchen, just outside his door. Fear seeped into his chest.
Luke wasn’t alone. Eddie heard another woman’s voice, loud and raw outside his door. They moved away, falling their way up the stairs, saying nasty things.
Then it grew quiet. And he waited, thinking how tired he was of feeling afraid. Sick to death of it.
There he goes again.
Battling another barfly in his bedroom. The raw-voiced woman was swearing at Luke. Yelling about going to the police, just like the other one had. He heard her begin to trip her way down the stairs, just like the other one, only this time the foul words turn into a high pitched scream accented by a drum roll of stairs hitting flesh. Just like his mother.
It grew quiet again. His heart slowed from a gallop to a canter. He lay on his bed, searching for his happy dream-thoughts about the red haired woman.
Banging on the door! “Eddie! Get up! You gotta help me! I gotta bury this one better. Open this stinkin’ door! I’m stinkin’ gonna beat you if you don’t open this door, you cripple-retard!”
He should tell his aunts.
Chapter 15: Autopsy
As I made my way to Monday morning’s meeting I reviewed what I knew about Cleveland County.
On a map, Cleveland County looks much like a saddle riding the sprawling ridge of the Peninsula Range. Larger than its sister counties, San Diego and Imperial, Cleveland County covers about thirty-three hundred square miles and sits almost a mile high.
Perched on a mountain range, three rudimentary mountain systems run north to south through this county; Applepine Ridge on the far west, Pebble Ridge about center-west, and a handful of bumps to the east that I’ve been told the area natives have named Walking Foot Hills.
Two peaks, one in Applepine Ridge and one in the Pebbles, actually top eleven thousand feet and boast the only reliable winter ski slopes south of Big Bear Mountain.
Crisscrossing repeatedly and running north to south between Applepine and the Pebbles are the I-13 and a broad river. The river, named Mesa de Pala Rio, keeps the Tijuana River from petering out entirely before reaching the city of Tijuana.
Running east and west across the county are several minor roads that navigate the Peninsula Range in the usual snaking turns and switchbacks, and a branch of the Union Pacific Railroad system that was completed a year after the first transcontinental railroad in May 1869.
The city of Pinto Springs is the county seat and it forms its own diminutive saddle, slightly off-centered to the north and east of Cleveland County. It is in Pinto Springs that most of the government offices
are housed. At ninety square miles and with a population approaching one hundred fifty thousand, the city has a fair sized police department of about three hundred which Matt and I have dealt with before in a professional capacity.
The county government has a sheriff’s system twice the size of the PS cop shop. But this agency is so spread out, north and south, that it actually takes a backseat to Pinto Springs PD. As can be expected, between the two agencies, PSPD and CCSD, exists the usual sometimes helpful-sometimes not interaction.
Housed in some abandoned hospital buildings—now fully rehabbed and nicely landscaped—the Cleveland County Forensic Sciences Center was one of two major employers left in the north, both of them government related.
I noted that my mood had dampened with my arrival up on the CC plateau, in part because the weather was gray and threatening some kind of moisture.
Supposedly because of the saddle image and the name of the city, the Pinto Springs Homicide Unit was long ago nicknamed the Four Horsemen after the biblical riders. Back then there were four senior detectives working for the PSPD.
More recently the nickname had morphed, however, into the Dos Caballeros Malos in honor of a couple of reportedly nasty senior detectives, Learner and Mosby—the sole survivors of a spate of budget cuts.
There were other Pinto Springs investigators, just none of the lofty rank of senior detective.
Senior Detective Robert Learner earned his nickname of the white horse rider, Pestilence, from the grease burn that drapes over his nose and spills onto one cheek, the result of a childhood kitchen accident. The unsightly scar is made worse by a bad case of pustular psoriasis on both otherwise white cheeks.
His partner, the other budget-cuts survivor, was dubbed Famine--of the black horse--because he is indeed black and also anemically thin. That would be Detective Leslie Mosby. Both are thought of as nasty backstabbers by the rest of the department, according to Matt.
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