Joan nodded. “It’s true, Fred. You could ask her.” And she pointed to the Indiana woman. “She saw the stitches they took out. I’m sure her memory for such things is good enough to make the comparison with what Kitty did on the orchestra quilt. Even I can, and I agree with Rebecca.”
“Let’s say you’re right,” he said. “And just for the moment, let’s say Kitty’s telling the truth and Edna gave it to her. How did it end up here?”
Kitty turned her back on Leon, Alice, and Harold to respond. “They wanted all Edna’s quilts in this room. She made that one, so Mary Sue said it belonged here. I tried to keep it home, but she insisted. I didn’t know how to say no.”
“Did you know what was in it?” Rebecca asked.
Kitty ducked it. “I knew it was her gift to me.” Joan and Fred exchanged looks.
“And you didn’t plan to cut into it,” Joan said.
“No!”
“I believe her, Fred. Why should she come here late at night to cut into something that belonged to her? Look.” And Joan pulled the quilt show program out of her pocket. “Not only does it say so on the wall—it’s printed in the program notes supplied by Mary Sue, who knew more about her mother’s quilts than anyone else in the family. All Kitty had to do was wait until after the show, with her right as owner firmly established.”
“But you did come back that night, didn’t you?” Fred said in that conversational tone. “Or maybe you never left at all. Actually, I’m inclined to think that’s more likely.”
Kitty stared at him.
“Alice told her old friend Johnny Ketcham that you said you were too wound up to sleep that night and you wanted to walk home alone. She said Leon dropped her and Harold off at her mother’s house and drove home alone. It appears that Mary Sue went home to her house but returned for some reason—we know she had keys to the inn. Leon didn’t want you and Alice to talk because he knew we’d find out that none of you could alibi the others.”
“Yes,” Joan said. “And Mary Sue would have let any of them back in.”
“It wasn’t that way!” Kitty blurted.
“Are you calling me a liar?” Alice demanded.
“No.” Kitty was quiet again.
“Maybe Leon went back after he dropped the others off,” Joan said. “He arrived about the same time as Mary Sue. She let him in, and—I don’t know what.”
“He made some excuse to go upstairs,” Rebecca said. “Then he started cutting into quilts, the way Mom said. Mary Sue came in and caught him, and he clobbered her.”
“He’s tall enough,” Joan said, not looking at him. That’s it! she thought. That’s why it must have been Leon. She felt better. “Alice and Harold couldn’t reach up there without a ladder. Neither could Kitty.”
“Mm-hmm,” Fred said. “But you’re forgetting somebody.”
“Who?”
“Mary Sue was tall enough.”
“Mary Sue is dead!” Joan felt silly as soon as she’d said it. She was sure her cheeks were red. Fred smiled at her. “Oh,” she said. “I see what you mean. But why?”
“Maybe the will,” he said. “But I doubt it. Mary Sue was the one member of her family who was interested in quilts, the one person likely to know—or at least suspect—what was in this one.”
“And she’d know old from new,” Joan said.
Fred nodded. “Suppose she started in systematically checking the new ones for the Hanks quilt, one after the other. She had no luck with the first three, but no problems, either. Then she attacked the right one. Like this.” And he pulled out a pocket knife and advanced on the table, shoving his way roughly between the Kentucky woman and the Indiana woman. They gasped.
“No!” Kitty screamed, and ran at him. She threw herself at his six-foot Swedish frame and hammered his back with both fists, for all the world like little Amahl in Amahl and the Night Visitors, Joan thought, desperately pounding the guard who grabbed his mother when she went for the gold. The uniformed officer pulled Kitty off Fred and restrained her arms. Trembling, she sat down in a heap.
Joan was glad that Fred didn’t overreact to what was, after all, an assault on a police officer. He asked Kitty softly, “Is that how it was with Mary Sue?”
“It was mine! It was all I had! She had no right!” She was shaking.
“So you killed her.”
No! Joan thought.
“I never meant to kill her,” Kitty said in a small voice, looking at the floor.
Kitty, no! I don’t want to hear this.
“Why didn’t you just yell at her to stop?” Fred’s voice was gentle. Kitty looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears.
“I was going to. That’s why I stayed. But when I saw her with those scissors, the iron jumped off the stove into my hand. I hit her once and then I couldn’t stop hitting her. Then she stopped moving.”
“Katherine Graf, you’re under arrest for the murder of Mary Sue Ellett.” Fred gestured to the uniformed officer, who handcuffed her unresisting wrists in front of her. “You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to give up that right—”
“I know. You already told me my rights.”
“Did you understand them? Including your right to have an attorney present during questioning?”
“Yes. But I don’t want one. He might shut me up, like Leon. It’s such a relief to talk about it.”
Bars
Fred had expected shock and opposition, but after the scene at the inn not even Joan, for all her staunch championing of Kitty Graf, had objected to her arrest. With Kitty’s lack of resistance, he and Root had simply walked her across the street to the station. They’d booked her, and now she was waiting with Root in the interrogation room where he had shown Joan and Rebecca the damaged quilts only a little while earlier.
Johnny Ketcham met him in the hall and peered through the glass window at the slender figure in the wooden chair.
“She confess?”
“Yeah,” Fred said. “I saw it coming from her first reaction when they cut into her quilt. Then she let a couple of things slip. A little ham acting, and she was begging to tell me all about it. She had the keys to the inn in her pocket. Come on in before she changes her mind. The video’s running.” He opened the door.
Kitty, her wrists free again, was sitting in the stuffy room with a cup of black coffee cooling on the table in front of her. Root rose to leave, but Fred motioned her to stay. He reminded Kitty that she had been advised of her rights and had chosen to waive the right to an attorney during her interrogation. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“No.”
“Then tell us in your own words what happened a week ago Tuesday night.”
She sat silent for a long moment. He was on the verge of prompting her when she began. At first she spoke to the table, her voice so soft that he hoped the video would catch it. He didn’t want to risk distracting her by asking her to speak up.
“You know I was over at the inn helping hang Edna’s quilts on Tuesday.” She glanced up. Fred nodded. “We finished sometime after midnight.”
“We?”
“Mary Sue, Leon, and Alice. And Harold, Alice’s husband. You already know what happened then.”
“Suppose you just tell it the way it happened.”
“Mary Sue went home to her house. Leon offered the rest of us a ride to Edna’s house, but I said I wanted to walk. Only I didn’t go home. I’d found a door I could prop open—there aren’t any alarms in that old building. So I put a stick in it and pretended to leave. When they were all gone, I went back in.”
“Why? What did you expect would happen?”
“I didn’t know what would happen. I just knew I’d gotten talked into leaving the biggest thing Edna had ever given me in that building, and I didn’t trust it or Mary Sue as far as I could throw her.”
“You thought she’d come back?”
“I didn’t think—I was just scared.”
“Why especially Mary Sue?”
&nbs
p; For the first time she met his eyes. “You knew her?”
“Yes.”
“Then you knew her mother had it right. She could talk the hind leg off a mule. She was the one who made me take the quilt there. She was the only one in the family who knew anything about quilts—or their value. I was just hired help to her—not that Alice cared or I trusted Leon to do all that he promised. But I knew that if Mary Sue had any idea what was inside that quilt, she’d never let me keep it. She was the most likely person to miss it from Edna’s collection. And it was all I had from Edna. All I had, period, as far as I knew. I didn’t know what was in her will—that’s why I was so scared.”
“So you killed her.”
“No! I didn’t go there to kill anyone. I just wanted to keep an eye on it.” Fred didn’t buy it.
“You planned to stay up all night? And all the other nights?” She was silent. “How? How were you going to do that?” Finally, she shrugged.
“I was going to cut it down and take it home—steal my own property. I figured nobody would get too excited about a mediocre quilt. I could make a little fuss, and they wouldn’t suspect that I had it.”
“But you didn’t?”
She shrugged again. “I couldn’t reach it. Maybe if I’d had long shears—I don’t know. But all I had were Edna’s little sewing scissors, and I couldn’t come close to cutting it down.”
Fred and Ketcham exchanged glances. Ketcham spoke up.
“What did they look like?”
“Like little storks. I don’t know what happened to them. When I got home I couldn’t find them.”
“So then?” Fred said.
“Then I knew I’d just have to wait it out. But I fell asleep. I’d sat up with Edna a lot while she was so sick, and then there were all those people in her house—I didn’t know yet that it was going to be my house.” She shook her head wonderingly. “If I’d known …”
They waited, but she didn’t finish her thought.
“Did the kids come by?”
“Once. But I was hiding behind a bed, watching the door. They didn’t come in—just waved a flashlight around and went on. They were laughing and carrying on. Nice kids.”
Fred doubted that the mayor would appreciate a good review of his daughter’s behavior from this source.
“I’d been sleeping a little while—I don’t know how long—when I saw light. And there was Mary Sue, cutting into Edna’s quilts as if she had a right to. I suppose she did, in a way. But then I saw she was about to start in on mine. And—well, I told you what happened then.”
“Tell me again.”
“I never meant to kill her! I didn’t start out to. I ran at her to stop her, but when I went past the stove, my hand brushed the old iron that was on it. I didn’t decide to pick it up. But then I was hitting her with it, and I just couldn’t stop.” She ran down suddenly.
“The kids didn’t come in?” Ketcham asked.
“No. Mary Sue didn’t make a sound, not even when she toppled over. I don’t think she ever knew what hit her. And she landed on quilts.” Kitty shuddered.
“On her back?”
“No, on her face. I hit her on the back of the head—and the top.” Fred nodded. If he’d had any doubts, they were gone.
“Then what did you do?”
“I picked up her scissors and keys. I took the scissors home and put them in Edna’s sewing box. I was afraid to get rid of the keys. I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t have to get back in.”
“And the iron?”
“Funny—I don’t remember seeing it again. Maybe I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to leave her all bent over on her face like that—I didn’t hate her. So I turned her over and laid her out. And I covered her.”
“With what?”
“My quilt. But I didn’t want it to touch her. Not because she was dead—she didn’t bleed at all. I was afraid her lipstick could leak through the patchwork onto the good quilt. So I went hunting for the plastic bags we’d brought them over in. Just to protect it, you know.”
“Why did you leave your quilt there? Why not take it home the way you first planned?”
“Everything was different. It wasn’t just a plain quilt anymore. I knew that if anything disappeared out of that room you’d look harder for it because Mary Sue was dead. It was listed in the program, you know. Besides, now it was as safe there as anywhere. At the end of the show, I could still just claim it in the ordinary way and take it home. No one would want it who didn’t know what was inside.”
“Could you prove it was yours?”
“No, and that’s what scared me. Edna knew what the rest of them would do if they ever found out I had it. When I went to live with her, back when her mind was clear, she told me she was going to have her lawyer draw up a paper when she wrote her will. But I never found out whether she did it or not.”
That’s why you were looking for the lawyer who drew up Edna’s will. Fred kicked himself for limiting the warrant to the will.
“And then? After you covered her?”
“I turned off the light, walked home, and went to bed.”
“What time did she die?”
“I don’t know. I got home by two.”
Fred sat quietly, but she had run down.
“Anything else you want to tell us?” he asked finally.
“That’s all.”
Wandering Foot
Kitty’s arrest and sudden departure left the inn in turmoil. The wonderful Berry quilt—signed by someone who just might have become the mother of Abraham Lincoln—had been borne off as evidence. A quilt show worker had produced a plain white pillowcase and helped fold it with care after the quilt project women extracted a promise that it would be treated as the fragile antique that it was. Then they were gone.
“What will happen to her?” Rebecca asked Joan, who had been wondering just that.
“I don’t know.”
“I feel kind of sorry for her.”
“I know. I keep thinking that if that iron hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have hurt Mary Sue any worse than she hurt Fred just now.”
Alice was visibly shaken.
“Don’t worry, old girl,” Leon told her. “She won’t get a penny of Mom’s estate now.”
“Is that true?” Rebecca asked Joan.
“I don’t know the law, but I don’t see why it should be.”
“You can’t profit from your own crime,” Harold answered. “But Alice, that won’t apply to your mother’s estate, or, for that matter, to the quilt. They belonged to Kitty before she killed Mary Sue. Nothing changes that.”
“No,” Alice said. “If they were taken from her, we’d be the ones profiting from Mary Sue’s crime. She was the one trying to take what was Kitty’s.”
Alice, you’re okay, Joan thought. I wonder whether Edna’s bequest is enough to pay for a good lawyer. What if Kitty has to sell that quilt?
At supper they filled Andrew in. He pumped them for more. Finally he asked something Joan couldn’t answer.
“You said Kitty was too short to cut down those quilts, and she said she’d have to climb on a chair to kill Mary Sue. Is that what she did?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem likely. I just don’t know.”
Rebecca leaned forward suddenly. “You remember Dad’s favorite riddle? The one Rabbi Plaut taught him?”
“What’s green and hangs on the wall and whistles?” Andrew said promptly.
“Right. And the answer?”
“A red herring.”
“But that’s not green,” she deadpanned.
“So? You can paint it green.”
“But it doesn’t hang on the wall.”
“Is there a law that says you can’t hang it on the wall?”
“Well, no. But”—triumphantly—“it doesn’t whistle.”
“No,” he said sadly. “It doesn’t whistle.” They laughed, not because it made sense or was new, but because it didn’t and was old.
“So,” Andrew
said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I just got to thinking. What was short and cutting quilts? Mary Sue Ellett.”
“But Mary Sue wasn’t short.”
“Not if she was cutting the quilts down.”
“But she was cutting them down.”
“Not when she was cutting into them.”
“Don’t get picky,” Andrew said.
“I mean it. Think a minute. She didn’t stand there slitting them and peeking into the top edge from an angle that would be impossible even for her. First she cut them down. We watched a tall person do that to one—and then take it into the next room so she could spread it out on a table to look inside. But Mary Sue didn’t have a table. Where did you and Eddie find the quilts, Mom?”
“On the floor—oh! She was cutting into them on the floor. She must have bent over them.”
“Maybe. Or knelt on the floor. I always cut out my fabric on my hands and knees.”
“So what’s short and cutting into quilts works,” Andrew said. “I wonder if they’ve figured that out yet.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Joan said. “But there’s no hurry now. I can tell Fred anytime.”
She half-expected to hear from him, but the phone was silent that night. When she woke Sunday morning she found Andrew and Rebecca eating breakfast. Rebecca’s duffel bag was standing by the kitchen door.
“You’re leaving? So soon?” Just when I’m truly glad you came?
“It’s not soon. I’ve got to get back to work tomorrow. I can catch a plane tonight, after your concert.”
“If you’ll let me drive her to the airport,” Andrew said.
“Of course. I’ll come, too.”
With all worries about random murders set to rest, Mayor Deckard cut a red ribbon and declared the quilt show open at one o’clock. At two-thirty, Alex mounted the podium.
The crowd, rather than walking by as expected, stayed put to tap its feet to the lively numbers and stand quietly for the Ives. Joan held her breath when Eddie played, but he didn’t falter, and the effect was all Alex could have hoped for. The response was enthusiastic, and Alex tossed in “The Stars and Stripes Forever” as an encore. Now people were lining up to buy chances on the instrumental quilt, as they would be able to do all week.
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