“It isn’t a felony until we actually get in,” I pointed out.
Rich shook his head and jiggled the window slightly, then he gave it a push and it opened. “Now you’re in. I’m out of here.”
I handed Rich the keys to my car, the price I had to pay for his expertise, and warned him repeatedly about drinking and driving. But he was on his way before I’d finished my speech.
“Stay here,” I told Natalie. “I’ll climb in the window and open the back door for you.”
“Pregnant women don’t get to have any fun,” she said.
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and the police will find us. I hear prison is fun.”
I pushed my way up onto the windowsill and climbed in headfirst. Unfortunately it meant that I had to fall headfirst onto a hardwood floor.
“Are you okay?” Natalie called out when she heard the thump as I hit the floor.
“Shh.” I got up and looked out the window. “Back door,” I whispered.
I found my way in the dark to Oliver’s back door and let Natalie in. We stood in Oliver’s kitchen for several moments.
“What are we looking for?” Natalie asked.
“Something that links Oliver with Lily.”
“But we didn’t know Lily, so how will we know when we’ve found a link?”
“I don’t know. We’ll just have to figure it out.”
While Natalie opened the kitchen cabinets, I looked through the drawers. Everything was simple and sparse. Even the refrigerator held only a few items. There was nothing that seemed even remotely suspect. Of course it would have helped if I knew what we were looking for.
I looked up at Natalie. “How about the living room?”
We moved from room to room, finding more of the same—simple decor but nothing unusual. The layout of the place was very basic. At the front was a small living room. It led into a hallway. On either side were two bedrooms, with a small bathroom on the right side and several closets on the left. At the back of the house there was a kitchen with a small dining area.
“Notice anything weird?” I asked.
“Nothing except the bare walls,” Natalie said. “Don’t you think he’d put up his own paintings somewhere?”
“Or at least a friend’s painting or something,” I agreed.
“It seems so uncreative.”
I nodded. “The whole place is like a monk’s quarters.”
“I expected a bachelor pad.” Natalie sounded disappointed. “You know, with all the talk about his having an affair with Sandra.”
“Do you think Powell found evidence he had a relationship with Lily?”
“We should check and see if she was an artist or artist’s model,” Natalie said.
“That would give them a reason to meet,” I agreed.
“But what about the photos?” Natalie asked. “I just don’t see Oliver dropping a photo by his murder victims like some kind of serial killer’s calling card.”
“I suppose he wouldn’t,” I agreed. “Still, there has to be a connection between Oliver and both Lily and Sandra, or Powell wouldn’t have dragged Oliver into the station.”
Natalie looked at her watch. “Bernie will be serving dessert about now.”
“Maybe she can stretch it,” I said. “She can talk for hours.”
But one phone call to Bernie’s and we found that my grandmother and Oliver had already left, and Bernie had “lots to tell.”
It took me a minute to explain that Natalie and I were still in the middle of committing a crime so her news would have to wait. If we were going to get out without getting caught, we only had a little time, and there was one place left to check.
We left the back door open and walked to the garage studio. We had found a key hanging by the door in the kitchen, and I hoped it would open the padlock on the studio doors. I put the key in the lock and prayed. It worked. I opened the lock and pushed one of the doors just a crack so Natalie and I could get inside.
At first the studio seemed just as ordinary as the rest of the house. There were paints everywhere, with rolled-up sketches, blank canvases, and half-finished, clearly abandoned paintings piled up against the wall. There was a chair sitting on an ornate rug, and it looked as though Oliver had recently posed a model there.
It was just as an artist’s studio should look. I spent a minute imagining myself painting there, surrounded by oils and acrylics, and in my case, fabrics. But it was no time to get lost in fantasy.
I flipped through the paintings, most of them incomplete. Quilters often talk about their UFOs—quilts that are left unfinished mainly because the quilter has run out of interest or decided the idea wouldn’t work. Looking through Oliver’s studio, I realized that painters had them too. At the back of one pile was a piece that was completely different from anything else in the room. It was a bright collage of fabrics, found objects, and words on canvas. It was startlingly emotional and quite beautiful. I knew at once that the artist was Julie, the model for Oliver’s Nobody painting.
I turned to show it to Natalie but she was leaning over, pulling at something heavy. I put the painting down and walked over to her.
“What’s this?” Natalie asked as she pulled a covered painting from behind a desk. We uncovered it and stepped back. It was a large unfinished oil painting of a nude woman.
I knelt down to examine it. Something seemed strange to me, but I couldn’t quite figure out why.
“You know who it looks like, don’t you?” Natalie said.
I got up and looked at the painting from a distance. It hit me. Perhaps there was a little artistic license, but there was no mistaking the model in the painting.
And now nothing made sense.
CHAPTER 33
“Are you sure?” Carrie asked me.
“As sure as I can be,” I said.
“Why?” Susanne seemed as bewildered as the rest of us.
The day after our trip to Oliver’s, Natalie related our adventures to the rest of the group. I was supposed to be painting the mural at Carrie’s shop, but I hadn’t gotten much painting done because the questions our discovery raised were relentless.
“Did you have any idea that was going on?” Maggie asked me a second time.
“None,” I admitted. “Not from his end anyway.”
Bernie shook her head. “Kennette posing nude for Oliver? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“She likes him,” I said. “She makes no secret of that.”
“But he likes Eleanor,” Susanne pointed out. “And Kennette likes Eleanor. She wouldn’t do that to her.”
“It’s quite tasteful,” Natalie offered. “It doesn’t really show anything, you know, private.”
“But she’s still nude whether it shows anything or not,” I pointed out.
Maggie shook her head. “Don’t be such prudes. He’s an artist. He uses models. He probably thinks of Kennette as just another model, whatever she may or may not feel about him.”
“So why keep it a secret?” Natalie asked.
We all sat silently, trying to come up with an explanation.
“Kennette is private,” Susanne finally said. “Maggie and I tried everything we could think of to get information out of her the other night. We couldn’t find out a thing.”
“Maybe there’s nothing to tell,” Maggie suggested. “She’s a young girl. She’s full of hope and ideas and plans, but what kind of a past could she have? A high school boyfriend or a fight with her mother? We’re all struggling to crack her like she’s some great big mystery, but maybe there’s nothing there.”
“Except that she’s posing naked for Oliver,” Bernie said.
“What aspiring artist wouldn’t pose for a famous man like Oliver?” Maggie asked. “Think of what you might learn.”
Everyone looked at me. “If he weren’t dating my grandmother, I guess I would too,” I admitted. “And I might be shy about it, just like Kennette.”
“That might explain why Kennette isn’t mentioning it,
but it doesn’t explain everything. Natalie found the painting covered up and behind a desk,” Carrie pointed out.
“Why would Oliver hide the painting,” Maggie picked up her thought, “unless he wanted to keep it from Eleanor, who was supposed to come to his house the other night? And if he’s hiding it from Eleanor, then Kennette’s more than just a model.”
More silence.
“Well we’re not learning anything about Kennette, and I’ve been looking,” Natalie jumped in.
“At least Oliver isn’t shy about his past,” Bernie added. “He was telling all kinds of stories last night.”
“One thing at a time, please,” Susanne cried out. “Honestly, we need to approach this with some organization. I feel like we’re just going around in circles.”
“Are you looking for someone to keep minutes and type up an agenda?” Bernie laughed.
“And maybe we should have refreshments,” Maggie added.
“I vote for that,” said Natalie.
“I think we’re getting off topic,” I suggested. My group of amateur detectives was turning into a social club.
Susanne stood up to address the group. “I’m just saying that we need to go in order. Like when we show quilts at the meeting. We each take turns showing our quilts and getting suggestions from the group,” she explained. “And Eleanor keeps things from turning into chaos. There’s no reason that solving a murder investigation should be any less organized than a quilt meeting.”
With that, all eyes were on me.
“Okay,” I said, looking at each face. I settled on the person that seemed the most impatient. “Then let’s start with Bernie.”
Bernie took a deep breath and leaned forward.
“Oliver said he came to the States looking for a fresh start after his divorce,” she said. “He went straight to the Village because, well, that’s where you went if you were an artist or creative type or just looking for some fun.”
“And he said he got into drugs?” I asked.
“Yes.” Bernie leaned forward. “He said he got on a downward spiral. He said he ‘dabbled’ in drugs, that was his word, but that alcohol was his choice for . . . How did he put it? His choice for self-destruction.”
“And Eleanor was sitting right there while he told you?” I asked.
“The whole time.”
“And then”—Bernie looked around, obviously holding the juiciest information for last—“he mentioned that he often painted near the river and once he had a model who fell in the river and nearly drowned. He said it was a scene he would have liked to have painted. He said he ‘reluctantly,’ and that was his word, helped her instead.”
Bernie sat back and watched our faces. Like the others, I didn’t know what to say. Oliver killing models to make great paintings was a motive that had not occurred to me. And if it were true, had that turned Kennette from suspect to potential victim?
“So where do we go from here?” Susanne asked, breaking the tension.
“I don’t know,” I acknowledged. “Anybody else have news?”
“I do,” Natalie said. “Or rather, I don’t. I contacted police departments in the neighboring states and Canada about missing-persons reports on the victims and Kennette Green. There were no missing-persons reports.”
“They just gave you that information?” Maggie asked, surprised.
“No. I faxed them a request on Archers Rest Police Department stationery,” Natalie admitted.
“Where did you . . . ,” I started.
“I stole some for her when I bailed Rich out of jail yesterday,” Susanne said matter-of-factly.
We all laughed.
“Between the two of you and Rich, I’d say we have our very own crime family,” Bernie said.
Natalie glanced at her mom, who did not look amused, and then returned to her report. “I did find out that Lily Harmon is an alias. Her real name was apparently Lily Price. She had a dozen or so arrests in New York City and in Ontario for petty theft, shoplifting, and stuff like that.”
“So Lily wasn’t such an innocent victim after all,” Natalie said.
“Would you kill someone for shoplifting?” Maggie asked. “That might not have anything to do with this.”
“Well, it might have put her in contact with criminals,” I suggested. “And one thing led to another.”
“We don’t have any criminals as suspects. We don’t even know any criminals,” Susanne said.
We all looked at her.
“Rich isn’t a criminal,” she protested. “He’s a kid.”
Susanne got up, as if she were about to storm out of the shop. Carrie coughed.
“Well, if I can go next,” Carrie said. “I looked into Lily’s and Sandra’s financial background and there was nothing on Lily. I’ll try the last name Price and see if I have better luck. And Sandra had a credit rating of 460, which is about the worst you can get.”
“So Sandra was in financial trouble?” I asked. “We know Oliver was giving her money.”
I looked around again. No one else seemed anxious to speak.
“So what’s next?” Susanne asked, sitting back in her original spot.
“I guess we go back to Kennette,” I decided reluctantly. “Carrie, if you can check into her financials—”
“If she has any,” Carrie interrupted. “Has anyone seen her use a credit card?”
“Even so,” I said, “it’s all we’ve got.” I sighed. “And I think I’ll just ask her about modeling for Oliver and see what she says.”
The others began to leave, some through the front door, others the back—just in case anyone was across the street, looking out the windows of Someday Quilts. I was just about to start work on the mural when Bernie came up behind me.
“I forgot to mention this, but I have bad news on the autopsy,” she said. “I went through the reports on both girls and there wasn’t anything we don’t already know. Lily drowned and Sandra was strangled. They don’t seem to have anything in common, except the killer.”
“At least we think so,” I said.
Bernie shook her head sadly. “They both seemed to have put up a fight, poor things.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, Sandra had a few scrapes on her hands, so my guess is that she was hitting her attacker, and Lily’s hands had been bound.”
“By a rope,” I added.
“No, I don’t think it was. There were no fibers. It had to have been something metal or plastic. Anyway, she had bits of blue rubber under her fingernails. If it had been blue paint, we’d have Oliver, wouldn’t we?”
As she walked out the door I stood frozen. I knew instantly that I had held the killer’s watch in my hand. The watch Greg found in Sandra’s bed and then lost.
CHAPTER 34
For two hours I worked on the mural and thought of how crazy things had become. I felt certain that if I could just figure out the connection between Lily and Sandra I could find the killer. And if I could find the killer, hopefully life would go back to normal.
When Carrie was ready to leave the shop to pick up her kids, I decided to leave as well. But rather than going home, I headed across the street to Someday Quilts. Just a few customers were wandering the store, and Eleanor was at the cash register, ringing up a sale.
“Need help?” I asked.
Eleanor nodded. “We’ve only got about twenty minutes until closing so we’ve got to get this group out of here.”
“Where’s Kennette?”
“She needed the afternoon off,” Eleanor said. “It’s been slow most of the day anyway.”
Feeling for the first time today that I could do something within my comfort zone, I went toward the back of the shop to help a woman who stood staring at a bolt of brightly printed fabric.
“It’s beautiful,” I offered. “Can I cut some for you?”
She stroked the bolt, a technique I recognized as part of the quilter’s courting process. First we fall for the look of the fabric—the print,
the color. Then we begin to pet it, running our hands across the smooth cotton. It may seem odd to an outsider, but quilting is a tactile experience, and since quilts are meant to be snuggled under, it’s important that the fabric feels right.
“I can’t decide how much to get,” she said. “I love it, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.”
“How large are the quilts you make?” I asked.
“Large enough for a nap, usually. I don’t think I’m ready to make a bed-size quilt.”
“Two yards at a minimum,” I said confidently. “That way you can make borders and use some of it in the quilt blocks. But five yards if you want to use it for the back of the quilt.”
She petted the bolt again. “I really love it,” she said. “And I know if I wait a week it will be all sold out and I’ll never see it again.”
I smiled. “We usually order only one bolt of fabric,” I agreed. “When it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“I can’t live without it, silly as that sounds.”
“Not to a quilter.”
“I know I’ll use it,” she said as she handed me the bolt.
“Five yards, then?”
She nodded.
As I cut the fabric I felt a certain amount of relief. Fabric has that effect. With each customer I helped, I ran my hands across the bolt and felt the cotton between my fingers, and just like the woman with the bright print, I fell in love with the fabric in my hands.
As we closed up the shop for the night I wanted nothing more than to stay there and cut fabric for myself and focus only on making a quilt. It seemed like a silly idea until I picked up a new arrival, a soft yellow floral.
“I want this,” I found myself saying. “I want to make a quilt. And I want to make it now, tonight.”
“I’ll get some food from DeNallo’s,” Eleanor said, “while you pick out a pattern.”
“You’re going to help?”
Eleanor kissed my forehead. “I’ve been missing my granddaughter,” she said.
I chose a simple Irish chain, a pattern of crisscrossing blocks that form diamonds in the quilt. I walked through the shop and gathered complementary fabrics, solids in soft greens and blues, a small floral in blues, and several choices from the collection of yellow florals as well as a yellow and green plaid. I hoped the quilt would be romantic and soothing.
A Drunkard's Path Page 18