Buried in Quilts

by Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  “Who died?” someone shouted.

  Fred held back. They’d know soon enough.

  “We haven’t reached the relatives yet,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Wait a minute, everybody!” No one was paying much attention to Joan, who was waving her hands in the air. “Don’t go yet!” But they were packing up. The quickest among them were already heading for the door.

  Fred blasted them with a two-fingered whistle that got their full attention, and then made the “all yours” gesture to Joan. Smiling her thanks, she climbed onto the podium.

  “Alex asked me to ask you—can you all be here Saturday morning to finish this rehearsal?” A chorus of groans and moans objected. “Come on,” she said. “It won’t take long. How about if we start at ten? Anyone absolutely can’t come?” Only a few bows waved in the air. “All right, then. See you here Saturday at ten sharp. And thanks.” She stepped down.

  “Any ringers here tonight?” Fred asked her.

  “No, just the regulars. Here’s a roster.” She gave him a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers. “I marked all the ones who were here tonight.”

  “Thanks.”

  He stood back then and watched her check out music.

  “Okay, Eddie,” Fred said. They were sitting in what had been the first violin section. Behind Eddie, who was holding his trumpet like a baby, he could see Joan collecting abandoned music folders and unplugging extension cords and stand lights. “Tell me again about when you tripped.”

  “I told you. I just tripped.”

  “Over what?”

  “I don’t know. It was dark in there. Not—not her.” He shuddered.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, and I’m sure I didn’t pull those quilts down!”

  “Okay, okay. Think back. What did you feel when you hit the floor?”

  “I didn’t feel a darned thing. I was too mad. I thought I’d bent my horn.”

  “You had it in your hand when you fell?” Ketcham asked.

  “Yeah. I went in there to play the question. I couldn’t find the light switch. No problem—it’s only five notes—and I could play them in the dark.”

  “Before you fell?”

  “Yes. No, after. Both. I don’t know. Ask Joan, why don’t you?”

  “We will,” Fred said. “How about your other hand? You pick up anything?”

  “No, I told you. Not until I started to pick up that cover.”

  “Maybe a pencil?” Ketcham asked. “Something you could have skidded on?”

  “How many times do I have to say it?”

  “Okay.” Fred stood up. “Thanks, Eddie. Give us a call if you think of anything else. We’ll be in touch. Meantime, don’t talk about it. Not to anybody.”

  “That’s it? I can go?”

  “We’ll need you to go over to the station to leave your fingerprints so we don’t think they belong to a killer, and to put in writing what you just told us. Then you can go.”

  Eddie didn’t wait for them to change their minds.

  “The lights have just gone on,” said Fred. He was sitting on the podium. Joan had taken the concertmaster’s seat and would have been staring past him if her eyes hadn’t been closed. “You’re blinking a little. What do you see first?”

  “Eddie. He’s over by the fireplace. And his trumpet—it looks okay.”

  “Then what?”

  “Quilts on the floor. You saw them. But I didn’t know she was under them.”

  “What else?”

  “The iron!” Her eyes popped open, and she leaned toward him. “Fred, that’s it. There was an old-fashioned sadiron on the floor—you know, one of those heavy flatirons they used to have to heat on a stove. That’s what tripped Eddie! It was near Mary Sue’s head—before I knew her head was there. I put it on the mantel.”

  Her face changed from delight to dismay.

  “Oh, Fred. Is that—? Did it—?”

  “Could be.” He’d know soon.

  “And I picked it up with both hands. Fred, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know I was disturbing evidence.”

  “Can’t be helped.”

  He sighed. Wondered where tonight’s kids were. Wondered why nobody had looked into that room all day. He didn’t need Henshaw to tell him the body had been there that long. And Joan had seen Mary Sue there the evening before. Had Mary Sue ever left?

  “Think back to when you were here last night,” he said. “What was it like in here?”

  Scissors Chain

  Last night might as well be last year, Joan thought. Focus on the scene. How did it look? She turned her eyes from the walls hung with quilts to the plain one opposite her.

  In her mind the Elletts gathered, and with them, some of the rest of it.

  “There were two big stepladders,” she said. “And bags on the floor.”

  She wound the cord around a stand light and laid it with the others in the box at her feet.

  Fred nodded and handed her another light.

  “What kind of bags?” asked Ketcham.

  “Plastic garbage bags.” She didn’t have to think about that. “This place was crawling with them yesterday. There were plenty in that room. Some still had quilts in them.”

  “You could see through them?” Ketcham sounded as if he didn’t care.

  “Yes.” And through him. “Just like the plastic on her face.”

  Fred looked tired. He reached for a light and slowly, deliberately, began wrapping its cord around it.

  “The committee specified either marked pillowcases or clear plastic, Johnny, so no one would toss out a quilt with the garbage. Or sneak two out in one big bag.” He tucked the plug into the end of the coiled cord.

  “So Mary Sue’s killer was there before they put the bags away,” Joan said. Does that mean it’s a member of the family?

  “Or knew where they put them,” said Fred. “Or brought one along.”

  Of course. Why don’t I keep my big mouth shut? She wound another light.

  “What about the iron?”

  She stared into the box of lights but had to shake her head.

  “I don’t remember it. I wasn’t looking at the floor then.”

  “Who was there last night?” he asked.

  “In the room?”

  “For starters.”

  “Mary Sue, of course. Her sister and brother. Her sister’s husband. And the cousin who took care of Edna, Mary Sue’s mother, before she died.”

  “Just family?”

  “Yes. They were hanging Edna’s quilt collection in that room. I don’t think the judges were going to have anything to do with it.”

  “Leon Ellett’s still local,” Ketcham put in.

  “Alice doesn’t live here anymore,” Joan said, and felt silly. What was that, anyway? A song? A movie? She plowed on. “She came back for her mother’s funeral. Her husband is Harold somebody. I didn’t get his last name. Kitty Graf—that’s the cousin—talked about wanting to stay on in Edna’s house.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how that will turn out now.” Or how it would have turned out with Mary Sue alive, for that matter. A strange family, what’s left of it.

  “Will you go back in there with us and look around?” Fred asked. “Tell us what’s changed, or whatever else you notice.”

  Rebecca or no Rebecca, Joan put the last light in the box and went.

  Halfway up one curving stairway, she was relieved to see the stretcher start down the other, its burden covered with something she couldn’t see through. Her shoulders dropped tension she hadn’t known was there.

  The room looked different now. She wondered what the police hoped to learn from the quilts they were examining on the floor. One man was actually vacuuming them.

  “Hey, Fred,” another man said. “Look at this.”

  Squatting beneath a bare pole, he was pointing to a little pair of scissors at the base of one wooden support. Stork-shaped scissors.

  “Oh!” It slipped out.

  Fred tur
ned toward her.

  “Something wrong?”

  Silly question, she thought, under the circumstances. But she knew what he meant.

  “Fred, those look like Edna’s scissors. I saw them when we were working on the orchestra quilt. You’ll probably find a needle and thread, too. Kitty brought them that day. Last night they used them when they were sewing Edna’s quilts to the cloth they put the poles through—like curtain rods.”

  They went over to an old one that was still hanging. It gave Joan the willies to imagine piecing its postage-stamp-size bits together, much less quilting them. Basted to one corner was a neat cloth label dating it to 1850 and attributing it to a Berry ancestor who must have had a lot of time on her hands.

  “Eddie says he didn’t pull them down,” Fred said. “The lab can probably tell whether the threads were cut or broken.” He turned to Ketcham. “Be sure Henshaw sees the scissors. Ask him to check her for cuts.”

  Ketcham nodded, wrote something down, and went over to the pole.

  Cuts? A struggle? Small as they were, the stork-shaped scissors were sharp enough, Joan knew. But she had heard a different kind of struggle. Whispered words swam to the surface of her memory: “She’d never leave it to you!” and “I’ll stop you. You have no right!”

  “They’ve rearranged the quilts since last night,” she said slowly.

  “The ones on the floor?”

  She wished she could raise one eyebrow like that. Was Fred pulling her leg? Never mind.

  “When I came up last night, that big Double Wedding Ring against the wall was blocking the door. I could hear people whispering on the other side of it, but I couldn’t tell who they were. At the time I figured it wasn’t any of my business. But now …”

  And she told him.

  “Okay,” Fred said. “Let’s go over this again.” They were back down in Snarr’s chairs. “The family doesn’t know what was in the old lady’s will. Kitty wants the house. Leon’s hurting for cash. Alice doesn’t approve of Leon or anybody, including Mary Sue.”

  Joan nodded.

  “That about got it?”

  “Except for the notes.”

  “Notes?”

  Sorry, Kitty, she thought. Sorry, Edna. “We found a note in the orchestra quilt after Edna worked on it.”

  “A note.” This time both eyebrows rose. “To you?”

  “No, to Edna. Her memory went bad before she died. Kitty had started writing her reminders about all kinds of ordinary things, and she says Edna hated them. She hid those notes—and who knows what else? Kitty was trying to keep it secret. I don’t know how much the family knew.” I kept it from Leon, but I have to tell Fred. Don’t I?

  “We’ll talk to Kitty.” He yawned. “And the rest of them.”

  Joan caught his yawn and tried to read her watch. Her eyes were slow to focus. Half past nine. It felt more like midnight.

  “What time did you leave them?”

  “Around six. They still had a lot to do.”

  “And they were the only ones in the building?”

  “I think so.” Then she remembered her run-in with Catherine, hesitated, and knew she was caught.

  I don’t want to tell him all that. But I’ve waited too long. Now no matter what I say, he’ll think I’m covering something up. And he’ll be right.

  “No,” she said firmly. “When I came down here after I left them, I ran into the caterer. She was just starting to set up for a reception this afternoon. These chairs had blocked her path. We worked it out.”

  He didn’t push it. Maybe he was too tired. He probably already knew Catherine was catering the show. Or could find out. How many caterers did Oliver have, anyway? But Catherine and the Elletts weren’t the only ones in the inn when she left, were they?

  “Fred, didn’t the kids who spent the night hear something?”

  “You see ’em?” A question for an answer.

  “No.” How could she have missed them? And why didn’t he know? “The Elletts were in the only upstairs room with light showing. I thought they were you and the kids.”

  “How long did the fellow who brought the chairs stay?”

  “He took off when we finished setting up. Before I went upstairs. It was quiet by then.”

  “Did you watch him leave the building?” That was Ketcham.

  “No, he knew his way.” Come on. You think Bud Snarr sent him over to create a little extra business?

  “So he could have let someone in,” Ketcham persisted.

  Oh.

  “So could a lot of people,” she said. “Catherine, the Elletts—they all left after the dragon with the checklist went home.”

  An uneasiness settled at the base of her skull. Usually that meant she was missing something. She had learned to slow down and wait for a clear look at whatever it was—her keys in the ignition, the black nine she could move to a red ten in solitaire. Tonight she couldn’t see a thing, but the feeling persisted. She tried listening.

  Not a sound after her parting shot to Catherine. Afraid of saying something she wouldn’t be able to live with later, she had walked away and closed the big door softly. Silently.

  Too silently.

  “The door! I pulled it shut, but I’m sure the lock didn’t catch. Fred, it’s my fault!” And you trusted me.

  “Don’t give it a thought. You weren’t the last. Besides, you saw how well your dragon watched that door during the day.”

  Right, buried in bags of quilts.

  “Anyone could have slipped past her while it was so noisy.”

  “And hung around,” Fred said.

  It was spooky enough at night in that old building. Had she been there with a killer lying in wait? Joan shivered. In wait for Mary Sue, or would just anyone have done? Had she escaped a random killer by pure luck? What if she had set up later? And what if—

  “What if he’s still here?”

  “No such luck. Our guys searched. Nobody here but us chickens.”

  She worked at believing it. He did mean to kill Mary Sue, she thought, and he succeeded. Of course. Why hang around?

  “You all right?” Fred’s arm warmed her shoulder again.

  “Thanks, Fred.” She pulled herself together. “If you’re done with me, I think I’d better take this stuff home. I had to sign my name in blood to get the lights.”

  “They should be safe enough here now. We’ve posted a police guard.”

  Locking the barn door, and all that. But she didn’t say it. He was looking too grim.

  “You think the killer might come back?”

  “Don’t know. Depends on a lot of things. Like whether he got what he came for.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “But the quilts are still here, except the few we took as evidence.”

  “Fred, that’s crazy. Why would anyone kill to steal quilts? Why not haul them off when no one’s around?”

  “Suppose you plan to do just that. You wait in the building until everyone leaves. And then she surprises you by coming back while you’re cutting them down. Maybe you strike out with those little scissors, but they don’t stop her. So you clobber her with the nearest heavy object—the iron on the mantel.”

  Ketcham was nodding.

  “Not bad. It fits.”

  It would take a lot to stop Mary Sue, Joan thought. But wait a minute.

  “Why do all that and leave all the quilts?”

  “Panic,” said Ketcham. “Or he didn’t leave them all.”

  “We don’t have an inventory,” Fred said.

  “Yes, you do,” said Joan. “Or you will. When I arrived here yesterday, they were rushing a last-minute list of all Edna’s quilts to the printer for the program. Mary Sue was still alive and kicking then—she sent the list down. Besides, I saw her after that.”

  “Good.” Now Fred’s eyes were smiling with the rest of his face. “Now let’s get you over to the station to put it in writing.”

  But she wasn’t on foot this time. Rats.

  �
��My car’s here, Fred—I’m going to take the extra music and stuff with me, guard or no guard.”

  “I’ll be right back, Johnny.”

  She thanked him for helping her carry the boxes out to the car—probably all he meant in the first place—and drove the half-block to the police station. That feeling at the base of her skull was reaching her back teeth.

  Johnny-Around-the-Corner

  When Fred got back, Ketcham had the kids.

  “Where’d you find them?”

  “I didn’t. They just got here. Root, here, had the good sense to bring them in.”

  Fred nodded at the rookie officer, a stocky blonde. Evidently she was smart enough to listen to kids.

  “They say anything?”

  “No, sir. Not really. But they wouldn’t leave—said you wanted them inside. I thought I’d better ask.”

  “Thanks. Keep using your head out there.”

  “Yes, sir.” She left unobtrusively, and he turned his attention to the kids.

  There were four of them, two boys and two girls. The boys were leaning against the wall as if they crossed police barriers every day, but their enlarged pupils gave away their true feelings. The girls, just as big-eyed, weren’t even pretending.

  He’d already forgotten their names.

  Mary Sue had refused to spring for an off-duty cop. Instead, she’d recruited the children of her committee members. Patiently, Fred had instructed them. Last night they’d settled in with soft drinks and sleeping bags, treating the whole thing as a big lark. He thought he’d left them very clear about their responsibilities—and about calling for help instead of challenging an intruder. But they hadn’t called.

  And why were they showing up late tonight?

  “We’re not late,” said the boy who was tall enough to make a basketball coach smile. Maybe he did. Not knowing who was on the team branded Fred an outsider. Ketcham, like any real Hoosier, would know the local starting five cold. “She told us they’d be rehearsing till ten.”

  “Miss Ellett didn’t see any point in us hanging around while the orchestra was here,” one of the girls explained.

  Wonderful. Mary Sue had meddled with their security plans, such as they were, but hadn’t thought fit to tell him. He could cheerfully have killed her—except someone had beaten him to it.