Joan watched them, her viola tucked safely under her bow arm. Andrew and Rebecca were suddenly beside her.
“Congratulations, Mom!” Andrew said.
“I didn’t expect this little town to have such a good orchestra!” Rebecca looked as if she meant it.
“Thanks. It really went all right, didn’t it?” She had felt good about the music, but their approval delighted her.
“More than all right,” Rebecca said. “That piece with the trumpet upstairs would have given me the shivers even if I hadn’t known.”
“Too bad you couldn’t advertise it, Mom—the murder probably doubled the attendance as it was.” Andrew grinned. Then he peered at the empty wall to Joan’s left. “Say, Bec, is this where—?” She nodded. “They’ve left your sign up, anyway.”
“For all the good that does.” She shrugged. “Guess I’ll go home and start over again.” Home? Joan thought. Well, sure. Oliver was never home to Rebecca—I didn’t realize until this minute that it feels like home to me today. I can even recognize some of the faces.
A friendly one was advancing on them now.
“Fred!” Rebecca cried. Joan smiled. And I wondered what she’d think of a cop.
He shook hands with Andrew and put one arm around Rebecca’s shoulders before hugging Joan with the other. “I’m sorry I couldn’t see you last night,” he said, his eyes crinkling down at her. “I was afraid to call you by the time we were done with Kitty—I knew you had to play today.” She smiled up at him, feeling content.
“Thanks, Fred. It was okay. I already knew more than I read in the paper this morning.”
“Yeah. But without you two there wouldn’t have been anything to read.”
Rebecca beamed. Cops one, cynics nothing.
“Maybe not yet,” Joan said. “But you were sure all along—just not for the right reasons. You would have gotten there eventually.”
“Mmm,” he said. “Eventually’s a long time, especially when the mayor’s breathing down the chief’s neck. I’m grateful. Now if I could just find Rebecca’s quilt.”
“Oh, Fred, it’s not your fault!” Rebecca said. Cops two, cynics weakening fast.
“No, just my job.” On cue, his beeper beeped. He let go of Rebecca to turn it off. “I’d better check it out. You’ll be here for a little bit yet?”
“Oh, sure,” Joan said. “It takes a while to roll up those lights. And Fred, if you see the new person from Snarr’s, send him back to me. They want these chairs out of here ASAP.” He nodded, gave her a little squeeze, and took off through the crowd.
“Well, now,” Annie Jordan said from behind Joan. “I wouldn’t call it moving fast, but you do arrive, don’t you?” For once, she was without her knitting, but she hadn’t left her tongue at home.
“Have a heart, Annie—at least in front of my kids.”
“They shock easy?” Annie’s old eyes sparkled.
“Oh, you.” But Joan enjoyed Annie’s teasing. Putting her viola and bow in their case, she started on her end-of-concert duties—collecting music, unplugging stand lights, and rolling up the cords for storage. Andrew took off with Rebecca, who was taking a last look at the quilts.
Too bad about Rebecca’s, Joan thought. I wish that hadn’t happened. But I’m proud of how she’s responding. Now where’s that carton for the lights?
At first she took it for granted that she had simply forgotten where she’d put it. But as the players dispersed, the instrument cases behind which the carton could have been hiding gradually disappeared. A few minutes later, standing in an almost empty room, she knew she had a problem and decided to ask the nearest hall sitter. She was glad to recognize Ethel, the blue-haired woman who had been so desperate for relief on Saturday morning.
“A cardboard box about this big?” Ethel said. “Yes, I saw it. But it looked kind of messy sitting out in the ballroom, so I put it in a press in one of the rooms upstairs. I’ll show you.”
In a what? Joan wondered, but she followed Ethel, as grateful for her help as she was annoyed at her interference. At the top of the stairs Ethel turned into the first room and walked to the back. With her white gloves she gently lifted the corner of a pink-and-white sawtooth quilt and held it away from two pale green wooden doors set into the wall.
“There,” she said. “Just open it.” Joan pulled on the handles and the doors opened, revealing shelves—evidently a press was a linen closet. Sure enough, her grubby cardboard box was resting on what was probably an antique quilt that belonged to the inn when it wasn’t hosting a show. Then she caught her breath. The pinkish-brown quilt was altogether too lumpy for an antique. It couldn’t be—could it? She reached in and swept the shelf bare. The empty carton flew out, and Adam and Eve tumbled to the floor in all their passion.
“Stop!” Ethel cried. “Someone will see!” Her face aflame, she was trying to scoop up the naked figures. And Joan remembered watching her blush when she heard about the sleeping bag.
“No, Ethel,” she said. “You can’t keep hiding my daughter’s quilt.”
Now Ethel’s eyes opened wide and she stared at Joan’s long black skirt and pumps—concert dress.
“Not much like blue jeans,” Joan said. “But you’d never have brought me up here if you’d recognized me first, would you?”
“Please don’t turn me in,” Ethel begged. “I wasn’t stealing it, I swear I wasn’t. I was protecting it!”
“That’s a lot of bull, and you know it.”
“You didn’t see the letter!”
“What letter?” Joan couldn’t help it.
“When I came in that day, there was a horrible obscene letter fastened to it. Someone was threatening to do vile things to Adam and Eve. So I hid them.”
“Where’s the letter? Why didn’t you show it to the police? This place is crawling with them, or hadn’t you noticed?” Joan didn’t believe in any such letter. Ethel didn’t answer. “There wasn’t any letter, was there?” Still no answer.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I burned it.” So soft, she could hardly hear it.
“You what?”
“I couldn’t show that letter to a man, I just couldn’t. So I burned it in the Franklin stove. You almost walked in on me, don’t you remember?” And Joan did remember. I found the ashes. Then I saw Ethel in the hall. I thought for a minute I’d found the missing will, and so I missed finding Rebecca’s quilt.
“What are you going to do to me?” Ethel asked.
“If it were up to me, I’d probably hang you from the nearest rafter. But I don’t know what my daughter will say.”
“Thank you! Oh, thank you!”
Ethel’s gratitude embarrassed Joan. She gathered Rebecca’s sleeping bag into her arms. “Come on, Ethel. Let’s go tell Rebecca.”
It was a joyful reunion in spite of Ethel’s tears. Rebecca insisted on telling Fred, but agreed not to sign a complaint so long as Ethel was barred from ever working another quilt show. They found him at the front door and left him there to work it out.
“Now I can go home happy,” Rebecca told Joan, as they stood watching Adam and Eve being restored to their place on the wall. This time it sounded right. “And there’s still the viewers’ choice award. I wonder whether Carolyn got hers back in time to be in the running for that, at least.”
“You mean Carolyn Ryrie?” asked the worker hanging the quilt.
“Yes, do you know her?”
“We just hung her quilt—they gave it a special judges’ award. I think she’s still up front celebrating.”
“I’ll be right back!” And Rebecca took off running.
Fred came back to admire the wall.
“Fred Lundquist, what have you been up to?” Annie Jordan greeted him. “You’ve got a smile on your face like a wave on a slop bucket.” He pulled his face straight, but his eyes kept dancing.
“A little private business, Annie.”
Just then the doorkeeper crossed the ballroom and stuck a red dot on Rebec
ca’s label. For a moment, Joan was dumbfounded. Then she wheeled on Fred.
“Fred, you didn’t!”
“Well,” he said. “You never know when you’ll need a sleeping bag made for two.”
About the Author
Sara Hoskinson Frommer, a veteran of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra’s viola section, lives with her husband in Bloomington, Indiana. They have two adult sons.
Her seventh Joan Spencer mystery, Her Brother’s Keeper, will be published in Spring 2013 by Perseverance Press http://www.danielpublishing.com/perseverance.
Visit her website: www.sff.net/people/SaraHoskinsonFrommer
Special thanks to Charles Brown, Peter Chase, Doris Curran, Berniece Enyeart, George Huntington, Kathleen McLary, Mimi Sherman, Thomas Schornhurst, Judy Wagner, Elizabeth Warren, Deirdre Windsor, Shelly Zegart, and the Ragdale Foundation.
Books by Sara Hoskinson Frommer
Murder in C Major
Buried in Quilts
Murder & Sullivan
The Vanishing Violinist
Witness in Bishop Hill
Death Climbs a Tree
Reviews
For Murder in C Major
'Ironing for a corpse wasn't Joan Spencer's idea of fun.' With an opening sentence like that, you surely have to read on. You won't be sorry. Murder in C Major is a virtuoso debut by a new writer.--Washington Post Book World
A chatty, easygoing and conventional first novel....Why C major? Because Schubert's Ninth Symphony, with its great oboe solo in the second movement, is integral to the story.--New York Times Book Review
Murder in C Major is a thoroughly nice mystery with an amiable pair of detectives. It is recommended for those who enjoy a comfortable read on a long winter's night.--Wilson Library Bulletin
For Buried in Quilts
Frommer's second mystery (after Murder in C Major) offers an entertaining family-centered murder investigation while examining the importance of quilts as a means of understanding women's history.--Publishers Weekly
Frommer creates a persuasive Midwest ambience in this quiet book . . . about small-town life, big-time emotions, and the practical poetry of quilts.--Gail Pool, Murder in Print: The Best of New Writers, Wilson Library Bulletin
If you like quilts, music, and low-key mystery, this one will please. --Elorise Holstad, The Verdict Is Murder, Deadly Pleasures
For Murder & Sullivan
Truly suspenseful and chilling finale Publishers Weekly
A neatly plotted cozy filled with deft touches: Joan's affectionate relationship with her college-age son; what to do in Indiana during a tornado; the surreal dream of knowing, even in sleep, that you have to pee. Joan's relationship with local police officer Fred Lundquist is traced in the tentative dance of older lovers, as the debris of their past (she's a widow; he's divorced) swirls about them. A bit of melodrama at the denouement doesn't mask the basic intelligence and warm charm of this series.--GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Booklist
Murder & Sullivan invites you to kick your shoes off, hunker down on a plush cushion, and lose yourself in a rollicking, old-fashioned, down-home Hoosier-style murder. . . . Frommer excels at creating a small-town ambiance and connecting the story line of the operetta to events aswirl on both sides of the stage curtain.--Edward S. Gilbreth, Mysteries, Chicago Sun-Times
This is a wonderful book full of twists and turns, plotted around a Gilbert & Sullivan production of spooky 'Ruddigore' by someone who obviously loves G&S.--Alma Connaughton, Mysterious Women
For The Vanishing Violinist
Anyone who has ever been involved in the performance of music of an amateur or civic nature will get an extra measure of enjoyment from Sara Hoskinson Frommer's fourth book about Joan Spencer, a sharp and likable woman of a certain age whose interests and concerns are universal enough to win our hearts and unusual enough to capture our minds.--Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune
A well-plotted tale. . . The novel's highlights, however, are the exceptional descriptions of the musical performances, passages in which Frommer proves herself, at least for a moment or two, a Paganini of prose.--Publishers Weekly
It's a fun mystery that focuses on the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. It's enjoyable because it is so insightful and exact.--Tom Beczkiewicz, executive director, International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, Indianapolis Monthly
A warm cozy with a most appealing heroine. . . . The rhythms of small-town life, a good bit about music and musical competition, and the contrasts of Joan's easy relationship with her son and her fraught relationship with her daughter dovetail nicely with twinned mysteries that turn out, of course, to be connected.--GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Booklist
Her best to date--Kirkus Reviews
For Witness in Bishop Hill
The prize here is the gently effective interpretation of the Alzheimer's scourge. -- Kirkus Reviews
When Joan and new husband Lt. Fred Lundquist travel to Bishop Hill for a belated honeymoon, the only witness to murder in the small Swedish-American community is Fred's Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Expect plenty of cozy chills as Joan strives to prevent a vicious killer from striking again. -- Publishers Weekly
The care and handling of Alzheimer's victims is neatly enfolded into this tale, which also gently treats Swedish Christmas customs, the tender and fraught relationship between Joan's college-age son Andrew, his new step-father, and herself, and the long memories of small towns. Frommer is a brisk and clean writer, and she handles the rueful ambivalence of middle age very well indeed. -- GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Booklist
Family dynamics and a Midwestern sensibility are the hallmarks of Sara Hoskinson Frommer's Joan Spencer series. So it's no surprise that the author delivers an insightful take on Alzheimer's disease and domestic issues in the well-plotted Witness in Bishop Hill. . . Yet never once does Frommer stoop to a maudlin viewpoint.-- Oline H. Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
For Death Climbs a Tree
Clashes between environmentalists and builders, struggles in the workplace, and blending families combine to make DEATH CLIMBS A TREE an all-too-believable contemporary tale.--Molly Weston, Meritorious Mysteries
"I can't play the concert," violinist Sylvia Purcell informs Joan Spencer, the Oliver Civic Symphony manager, at the start of Frommer's sixth Joan Spencer mystery. "I have to sit in a tree." Sylvia's protest against the development of a wooded area for low-income housing turns deadly when she falls out of the tree in front of Joan and her son, Andrew. Evidence Joan finds points quickly to murder, with Andrew a prime suspect. Low-key suspense and likable characters.--Publishers Weekly
Sara Hoskinson Frommer delivers a solidly satisfying, character driven, small town cozy that addresses not only environmental issues but aging, workplace harassment and the impact of death on family and friends left behind. A very enjoyable read.--Sally Powers, I Love a Mystery
And advance praise for Her Brother’s Keeper
A charming, engrossing, family mystery. With Mozart. To be read with a mug of hot chocolate and marshmallows. What could be better?--Kerry Greenwood, author of The Phryne Fisher Mysteries
In Her Brother's Keeper, the likable Joan Spencer handles wedding disasters, family secrets, even murder with equal aplomb. Sara Hoskinson Frommer's latest is a thoroughly enjoyable visit to small-town Indiana. I'm already looking forward to the next one. Beverle Graves Myers, author of the Tito Amato mysteries
Cover photo Gabriel Frommer (Toes Jessica Oden)
Cover design Susan J. Kroupa
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