Buried in Quilts

by Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  “Don’t you believe it,” Fred said. “You’re forgetting about the piece of his shirt in our evidence bag. It doesn’t matter, now that we’ve got him dead to rights with the stolen goods. But before that, he didn’t want any public display of a design that could lead us to him.”

  “So he stole the quilt that matched his shirt.” Joan shook her head. “And then Carolyn talked him into lending her the shirt back by telling him she wanted to match the browns. He never would have taken it to her if he’d known she was planning to display it at the show!”

  “I wonder if they’ll let her enter her quilt now,” Rebecca said.

  “That’s the kind of decision Mary Sue Ellett would have made,” said Fred. “I don’t know how flexible the rest of them are. It’s in our evidence room, of course, but we ought to be able to release it now that we have the chips themselves.”

  “And the shirt,” Rebecca said, clearly enjoying herself. “With the hole that will match your scrap.”

  Mary Sue, Joan thought, and wondered whether Fred had asked Ralph about her yet.

  She heard the telephone then, in the kitchen. Andrew unfolded himself from his seat on the rug and picked it up on the second ring. “For you, Mom,” he said, stretching the long cord all the way to the end of the sofa.

  “Excuse me,” she told Fred and Rebecca, who continued their gleeful postmortem without seeming to notice. She sat down and tucked her feet under her. It was Alex, asking her to remind the orchestra members to show up at ten o’clock Saturday morning to finish the rehearsal that had been interrupted by the discovery of Mary Sue’s body.

  “Oh, Alex, we told them on Wednesday,” she objected. “And it’s Friday night. I have better things to do than call sixty people when most of them will be out anyway.” I can hardly believe I said that out loud, she thought, but I’m glad.

  It didn’t faze Alex. “Then call the section leaders and ask them to notify the others,” she said firmly. “I don’t trust them to remember anything they heard that night.” She had a point. Joan sighed.

  “All right, I’ll try. But I’m not going to be able to reach them all.”

  “Sure you will!” Alex boomed cheerfully, now that she’d won. Shades of Mary Sue. “Wake them up tomorrow if you need to. I’ll see you then,” she said, and hung up.

  Across the room, Rebecca and Fred were still congratulating each other on quick reflexes and fine detective work. For a few moments Joan just sat there, basking in their glow. Then she dug out her orchestra personnel list. She’d make the most important calls now, but leave the rest till morning. She started with Eddie.

  Oh, well, she comforted herself after the eighth ring, at least we got to finish the Ives on Wednesday. Just when she was about to hang up, a tired-sounding woman’s voice answered. Eddie’s mother, as it turned out, had been counting on his help hauling trash to the dump and compost to the garden after he delivered his Saturday morning papers.

  “This won’t take long,” Joan assured her. “It doesn’t start till ten, and he’ll be home well before noon.”

  “He’d better be,” the voice whined in her ear. Little kids were yelling in the background, and a baby was tuning up much closer to the phone. Poor mother.

  Poor Eddie. How had he ever learned to play so beautifully in the first place? Resolving to be extra nice to him from now on, Joan reached for the personnel list and dialed again. This time she reached a machine. The voice was that of a young man.

  “You picked a bad time to call. We’re (a) in the shower, (b) getting drunk, or (c) not interested in talking to you anyway. Please leave a short message for Scott, Julie, Dave, or Sara after the long beep. If we’re in a good mood, we might call you back.” She held the receiver away from her ear, waiting for the beep.

  It was going to be a long evening. She hoped Fred would still be there when she finished with the leaders. But he wasn’t. Ten minutes later, his pocket beeper sounded, and he took off. She barely had a chance to say good-bye.

  He was already at the inn when she arrived at nine the next morning to be sure everything was ready for the orchestra.

  “Sorry I had to duck out like that,” he said, taking the box of music from her.

  “I was the one who ducked out,” she told him. “You and Rebecca were having such a good time, I hated to interrupt. I spent most of the next hour on the phone.”

  “Nothing wrong, I hope?” He followed her through brilliant color to the ballroom, where stands and chairs stood more or less in order.

  “Just work. Alex was afraid people wouldn’t show up this morning—you can put that down anywhere, thanks.” She waved at the box.

  “So you were elected.” He set it on the floor.

  “I survived.” It sounded harsh in her own ears. She softened it. “I’m fine, Fred. Is there anything I ought to know to tell the orchestra folks this morning? Anywhere off-limits to them?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Not even the room where we found Mary Sue?”

  “We’re finished in there. The damaged quilts we took to the lab are safe in our evidence room. We didn’t find anything in them, though, and believe me, we looked. Just the stuffing—polyester in some, cotton in others, an old quilt in one. About all we really learned was that the threads were cut, not broken. That means the quilts were cut off the poles, not ripped down.”

  “So much for our theories.”

  “Not necessarily. If the killer found what he was looking for in one of the quilts, it wouldn’t be there now for us to find.”

  “So you do think it was a man.” Not Kitty, after all. Ralph?

  “Huh?”

  “You said, ‘what he was looking for.’ ”

  “Doesn’t signify. I can’t get used to he/she and his/her.”

  Before yesterday, at least, Rebecca would have given him a lecture on why it mattered to try. Maybe not now. Joan figured he already knew. He wasn’t going to volunteer anything, that was plain.

  Leaving the music downstairs, she went up to check what Eddie would have to deal with. Edna’s undamaged quilts, hanging up now, and the sunshine streaming through two narrow windows overpowered her gloomy memories of the room. The fateful sadiron—or a dead ringer for it—sat on the potbellied stove in the middle of the room. On sudden impulse, Joan opened the iron door and peered into the firebox. A little heap of ashes inside suggested to her why the room might have been warm on Tuesday. Had someone found the will then and burned it? No, not then, when the whole family was gathered together. Besides, what good would that do? There had to be an original at the lawyer’s office. It was bound to surface sooner or later.

  Leaving the room, she almost bumped into a white-gloved woman with blue hair.

  “Are you my relief?” the woman asked.

  “No, I’m here for the orchestra,” Joan said. “Sorry.”

  “This is positively the last time I’ll agree to sit,” said the woman, opening out a folding chair that had been leaning against the wall. “They’ve left me stuck up here for hours and hours!”

  “How long do you have to stay?” It wasn’t quite ten o’clock. Surely the inn hadn’t opened before nine.

  “Until I’m relieved. But you know how far it is to the little girls’ room down the street. I think I’ll die if someone doesn’t come soon.”

  “I’ll remind the lady at the door,” said Joan. “Would that help?”

  “Bless you, child,” said Blue Hair. And then, as if remembering her duties, “Did you get your ballot?”

  “Ballot?”

  “To vote for your favorite quilt.”

  “I don’t know anything about quilts.”

  “That doesn’t matter. The judges have made their selections. Now it’s our turn. Just write down the one you like best.”

  “My daughter entered the show—I’d have to vote for hers.”

  “Oh? Which one is it?”

  “The double sleeping bag downstairs. You know, the one of Adam and Eve making love.�
��

  The woman blushed to her blue roots. “I don’t believe I saw that one.”

  Just as well, if hearing about it embarrasses you. Joan accepted a ballot and escaped down the stairs, past a quilt made entirely of blue-jeans pockets and an all-white one with stitching so close and fine that it drew lines of tiny shadows. She didn’t pause to look at it. Remembering her promise, instead, she reported the hall sitter’s distress to the dragon at the door.

  “Oh, that Ethel,” the woman said, and ran a pencil down a duty roster. “She’s signed up to sit until noon. Honestly, I sometimes think she’s more trouble than she is help. Don’t worry about Ethel—I’ll find someone to send up to her.”

  In the ballroom, the first members of the orchestra were already setting up. Joan found Eddie and sent him upstairs.

  “We don’t absolutely have to run through the Ives again, but see if you can bear to play in the same room as before.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “No, Eddie, we could try out another one. But this one is easiest for Alex and me, and she liked the sound the other night. Take a look—it’s different in the sunshine.”

  “She won’t be there?” He wasn’t really asking. More like telling himself.

  “No, of course not. Go on, scoot.” He did, and came back looking much relieved.

  The rehearsal went smoothly. Joan particularly enjoyed several pieces by William Billings—the earliest American composer she had ever played. They did run straight through the Ives after all, less for Eddie, whose five notes were simple, than for the flutes, whose growing confusion took real concentration to pull off. They ended, as they would on Sunday, with Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust,” a crowd pleaser anywhere, but especially in his native Indiana. Even Alex found no fault today and dismissed the orchestra at half past eleven. Nice for Eddie’s mother, Joan thought. Maybe even for Eddie, if he drags his feet a little. But Eddie took off at a lope.

  No one hung around to look at the quilts. There was little ordinary conversation. People stopped talking abruptly when Joan passed by, as if they’d been caught gossiping about her family.

  John Hocking was the exception.

  “What have they found out?” he asked her. No need to say about what.

  “I haven’t heard much.” And it was true.

  “It’s a damn shame.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I see your daughter sold her quilt.” He nodded at the blank white wall next to the viola section. Joan’s mouth dropped open. Rebecca hadn’t said a word. But why had she come so far to showcase her concept, only to let a purchaser take her sleeping bag before the show even started? Didn’t people usually put a SOLD sign on the tag and wait? There wasn’t so much as a red dot here. She shook her head.

  “I didn’t know.”

  At home she congratulated Rebecca on her sale.

  “My what?”

  “Your sleeping bag. You know. It’s gone.”

  “You mean to tell me someone bought it and took it away?” Rebecca’s face paled. “Already?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Of course I didn’t know. I never heard of such a thing, and I certainly didn’t agree to it. I’m going right over there.” Pulling on her pea jacket, she ran out the front door.

  When Rebecca came back half an hour later, Fred Lundquist was with her, looking grim.

  “What’s wrong?” Joan asked. But she already knew from their faces.

  “It’s not sold, Mom. It’s just not there.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “No one at the quilt show knew anything about it. They take the money and keep track of who owns what, but they didn’t take any money for my quilt. According to their records, it’s still on the wall.”

  “I’m sorry, Joan.” Fred was holding his notebook. “When did you first miss it?”

  “I didn’t, actually. It was John Hocking.”

  “Who’s that?” He was scribbling.

  “My stand partner. He’s on your orchestra list from the other night. He’s the one who spotted Rebecca’s name the first time.”

  “Wednesday?”

  “Right.”

  “And when you got there today, it was gone?”

  “I suppose so. I didn’t miss it until after we played. That’s when John told me. I don’t know when he noticed. He wasn’t in any hurry to tell me—he thought it was sold.”

  “So when did you actually see it last?”

  “During rehearsal Wednesday. Afterwards, in all the excitement, I didn’t notice.”

  And then it came to her. While she and Fred had wrapped the lights, she’d been facing the wall John Hocking had reached out to stroke. A plain white wall in a room vibrating with color. She tried again. “You remember that night, when we were sitting downstairs wrapping stand lights?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We were sitting in the first violin section, and I was facing the wall Rebecca’s quilt was on. Only it wasn’t. The wall looked fine—just a wall. I didn’t think a thing about it. But earlier, when we were rehearsing—it feels like a year ago—I was sitting right by that wall, and Rebecca’s quilt was on it.”

  “You sure you’ve got the right wall?”

  “Fred! That’s like asking a shortstop whether he’s sure the batter didn’t run to third instead of first. The firsts never move, no matter where the conductor puts the rest of us.”

  “Sorry.”

  “But I can’t imagine how someone could take it with all those cops around.”

  “Maybe it disappeared before you found the body.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m sure it was there when I went upstairs for the Ives. John was close enough to touch it. I don’t see how it could have left before he did. He would have noticed—that quilt was hard to miss.”

  “The colors?”

  “The sex.” She watched his eyebrows climb. “I’m sure Rebecca told you that she quilted Adam and Eve into a double sleeping bag. She may not have told you that you can’t help seeing that they’re making a good start on the human race.”

  Rebecca dug into her duffel bag and handed him a photograph. Fred looked, grinned, and tucked it into his breast pocket. “I can’t promise miracles,” he said. “But I owe you one.”

  He went out the door and immediately stuck his head back in.

  “I forgot to tell you, Joan—Ralph has an alibi. Snarr’s called him at half past eleven that night to pick up a body up in Indianapolis. By the time he got up there, filled out the paperwork, brought the body here, embalmed it, and prepared it for viewing the next morning, Gil Snarr says there’s no way he could even have come over to the inn, much less killed Mary Sue and laid her out, too. Odds are, he was still up in Indy.”

  Joan felt instant relief. As if it makes any difference, she thought. Rebecca’s here, and they’ve caught Ralph. But I can’t help it. You must have known I’d feel like this or you wouldn’t have told me.

  “Thanks, Fred,” she said. And he was gone.

  “Now there’s a man.” Rebecca stood at the window, watching him drive off. “Why are you wasting your time with that other character?”

  “This character doesn’t seem particularly interested. I think he’s been burned. Anyway, Rebecca, I’m not looking for a man.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Rebecca pushing a man at her? And a cop, at that.

  Lawyer’s Puzzle

  How had someone smuggled a double sleeping bag past the officers on duty at the Sagamore Inn Wednesday night? Fred’s mind boggled. Diamonds, now, he thought, or those computer chips—anything small could easily have ridden out in an instrument case. And we weren’t searching people for weapons. But something this big—he tried unsuccessfully to imagine it folded along the back of a string bass. The case would be about right, he thought, but you’d have to leave the instrument behind.

  On the way back to the inn, he swung by the station and filled Johnny Ketcham in. Then he walked across the street to clear the cobwebs out of his hea
d.

  Even with Ralph alibied, Rebecca’s missing quilt was already playing hob with his theory about Mary Sue’s murder. If the murder and the theft were related, a possibility he had to consider, then it no longer made sense to look only at the family. At least they both happened at night, he thought. That narrows it down some. I’d hate to have to consider everyone who was at the inn this week.

  Inside, he spotted Officer Root standing at the rear of a quilt-filled room in which a lecturer was holding forth to an attentive crowd.

  “In a reaction to the plastic culture of this century, women and men have taken joy in rediscovering this ancient craft, in creating something with roots in the past and a flexibility that stretches into the future, in expressing themselves in useful objects of great beauty, in enhancing the visual and tactile qualities of earth-grown fabrics even as they experiment with others.”

  Fred caught Root’s eye when the lecturer took a breath. He jerked his head and she came out to him.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You like this kind of thing?” He gestured around them.

  “I like the quilts—I used to sleep under quilts my grandma made before I was born. I’m not so sure about the lectures.”

  “Then you won’t mind missing the rest of this one.”

  She stiffened. “No, sir. I’m on duty, sir.”

  “All right, Root, take it easy. I’m not chewing you out. We’re missing a quilt from the show, and I want you to work on it.”

  “Yes, sir.” She relaxed a little.

  “We don’t know much. We do have a good description of the quilt, and a color photo.” He handed it over. “It’s a sleeping bag, really. I don’t think you’ll have any problem with identity.”

  “No, sir.” Looking at the picture in her hand, she grinned broadly. “Doesn’t look as if they’re getting much sleep, does it, sir?”

  “Loosen up a little, Root. Let’s save some of the sirs for formal occasions, okay?” He smiled at her, pretty sure she wouldn’t take it wrong.

  “Okay.” She didn’t sound harassed.

  “This sleeping bag seems to have disappeared Wednesday night while we were all here and before the last of the orchestra people left. The one person we can count out is the manager. But anyone else who was here at that time is a possible. What I’d like you to do is find out just how many people that includes. I’ll work with Sergeant Ketcham on the orchestra—he has that list. You connect with the quilt-show people about the workers and anyone else who may still have been here from earlier in the day.”