by Jeff Shelby
Anger flashed in Heidi's eyes.
Lila sighed. “This is absurd. I'm not going to do anything to your mother's quilt other than beat the pants off of it. You want me to sign a release or something? Type it up and I'll put my name on it. But you better decide right now because I'm not going to waste any more of my time standing around here.”
Heidi unclenched her hands and took a deep breath. Then she took a deep breath and nodded at me.
I held the quilt out to Lila and she took it.
“After the results are announced, you'll be able to pick it up,” she said, lifting her chin.
“Fine,” Heidi said.
“Thank you,” I said to Lila.
“You're welcome,” she said. “I'm happy to take care of the second best entry in the competition.”
Lila left, the quilt in her hands, and Heidi and I both watched her leave. She hobbled down the street, to an old Buick sedan parked just in front of mine. She placed the quilt carefully into the backseat, then shut the door. She might not have much respect for Greta or even think that she had a snowball’s chance of winning, but she wasn’t going to do anything on her part to damage Greta’s chances. Because she was determined to win, fair and square.
Heidi sighed again and ran a hand through her hair. She was clearly distraught over what had just happened, which gave me pause. I’d hurried over to the house, convinced that she was responsible for her mother’s death, but her reaction to Lila’s words had thrown me. She’d responded with obvious dismay over the quilts, vocalizing that these were prized possessions now that her mother was gone. Would she feel this way if she’s been the one to kill her? Or was it simply her way of showing remorse, regret, over what she’d done? I had no idea.
“Why are you here?”
I startled. “What?”
Heidi had moved back into the hallway, toward the opened linen closet. There were stacks of towels and sheets, an assortment of soft pastels, on the carpet. Her attitude was definitely still hostile, even with Lila gone, and I knew this was a remnant from her evening visit the night before, when she’d told me to stop snooping around.
Which was exactly what I was planning to do right then.
“Why did you come by?” she asked.
Her frown deepened, and I swallowed. This was the moment I’d been trying to avoid when I was out by the car, contemplating calling Mack in to handle things. What could I possibly say that wasn’t an outright accusation? She already had hostile feeling toward me; asking questions was just going to make it worse.
I glanced down at the floor and my eyes landed on a small, clear storage box, positioned just in front of the stack of towels. Inside were orange medicine containers. Lots of them.
I did the one thing that made the most sense. I deflected.
“Are those your mother’s pills?” I asked, motioning to the box.
Heidi turned to look at it. “Yes. She was taking several medications.” She eyed me, the frown still lingering. “Why?”
“I was just surprised to see so many.”
“Well, she was old,” Heidi said, a little defensively. “She had high cholesterol and high blood pressure, and she was in the beginning stages of kidney disease and dementia.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “It happens to everyone, I guess.”
I could feel my pulse quickening as I phrased the next question. “I heard that the toxicology report is the reason the sheriff thinks your mother may have not died from natural causes.”
Heidi pressed her lips together and nodded. “Yes. I’m aware.”
I tried to sound nonchalant. “Do you think maybe she just took too many pills by accident? I mean, that would certainly explain an overdose, wouldn’t it? If she had dementia, maybe she accidentally took her pills twice that day?”
Heidi shook her head. “No. I sorted her pills for her. She had one of those pillboxes, with big letters on them so she could see. She kept a calendar in the kitchen and she marked an ‘X’ through each day after she took them.”
“So she couldn’t have gotten confused?”
“No,” she said firmly. “Besides, the sheriff checked the pillbox. All of the pills for the rest of the week were still in there. She hadn’t emptied any future days.”
Belatedly, I wondered if I should be recording our conversation. I knew it wouldn’t be admissible in court, but at least I’d have her on tape. It would be something concrete to hand over to the sheriff.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re here,” Heidi said. Her expression hardened. “Are you still trying to solve my mother’s death? Because I already told you—”
“I know, I know,” I said, interrupting her. “And, no, I just saw the door open and thought I’d come by. To…to apologize.”
“I don’t want your apologies,” she snapped. “I want you to leave and stay out of my and my mother’s lives for good.”
Her anger took me by surprise. Just a few minutes before, she'd been on the verge of tears at what might happen to her mother's quilt. Now, she was glaring at me like she wanted to take my head off.
I took a step back.
And bumped into someone.
I whirled around and Carol Luft was standing next to me, a look of surprise on her face.
THIRTY FIVE
“Is…is everything okay?” Carol asked.
I shifted so that I was no longer standing on top of her. “Yes, everything’s fine,” I said, pasting on a bright smile.
Everything was not fine. I still didn’t have answers, and Heidi was essentially kicking me out of the house. And her attitude was setting off all sorts of warning bells in me. I was more convinced than ever that she was the culprit.
I just didn’t know how to prove it.
“What can I do for you, Carol?” Heidi asked. Her tone was decidedly more friendly than the one she’d just used with me.
“Oh, I just came by to check on Greta’s quilts,” she said.
Heidi’s brow furrowed. “Her quilts? Why?”
Carol looked between me and Heidi and smiled. “Well, I thought I might be able to see about entering one of Greta’s quilts in the competition. I know the deadline has passed but it just dawned on me how nice it might be to put one of hers in, just as an honorary thing. She wouldn’t be eligible to win, of course, but we could display it and pay tribute to her and her amazing talent.”
Heidi smiled, but it did nothing to soften her sharp features. “You’re too late.”
Carol frowned. “Too late? The competition hasn’t happened yet. You know that. It’s part of the Dorothy Days festival.”
“No,” Heidi said, shaking her head. She grabbed a stack of sheets and stowed them back in the cupboard. “Someone beat you to it.”
“Oh?” Carol said.
Heidi nodded. “Lila came and picked one up.”
Carol’s eyes widened in horror. “Lila Bartholomew? That old bag?”
If Heidi heard the insult, she didn’t acknowledge it. “She wanted to enter one of Mother’s quilts posthumously.”
“Enter it?” Carol repeated. “You mean, in the competition? For prizes?”
“Yes,” Heidi said. The stack of towels was next. “She thought it was only fair, seeing as how Mother had planned to enter the contest.”
I stole a peek at Carol. The color had drained from her face and she looked visibly shaken. “Are you okay?” I asked.
Carol blinked a couple of times, then nodded. “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she murmured.
I didn’t believe her.
Heidi closed the cupboard door. The box of medicines was still on the carpet. “I thought you’d be pleased,” she said to Carol.
“Pleased?” Carol asked. “About what?”
“Why, about Mother’s quilt being entered after all. I know you two had planned to place a bet on who the winner would be.”
“A bet?” Carol was beginning to sound like a broken record.
Heidi got to her feet. Ther
e was a quilt behind her, one that had been hidden from view. It was white and blue, with what looked to be a nautical theme.
“Mother told me all about it,” she said.
I cocked my head. I didn’t think Heidi and Greta had been on speaking terms. According to Carol, their relationship had been strained for quite a while because of the fact that Greta had been dating George.
“Did you see your mother often?” I asked.
Heidi’s frosty attitude returned. “Of course I did. I was her primary caretaker.”
Something wasn’t adding up. “You were on good terms with her?”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Heidi responded. “She was my mother. We might have had some disagreements about how she chose to live her life, but she was still my mother.”
“But were you on good terms with her? Did you come over to visit?”
She folded her arms and glared at me. “I don’t have to answer your questions, you know. In fact, I could ask you to leave and that would be perfectly within my rights.”
I nodded. “I know, I know.” My heart was beating fast, the blood pounding through my ears. “Just, please, answer the question and I’ll go.”
“Of course I was on good terms with her,” she retorted. She looked at Carol, as if for confirmation. “You know that, right? You saw me here last weekend, when you were getting Mother’s pills ready.”
Carol looked like she wanted to disappear into the wall.
I didn’t blame her.
Because everything was beginning to make sense.
THIRTY SIX
“Did you get Greta’s pills ready that day?” I asked.
Carol licked her lips. The color still hadn’t returned to her face, which made the pink blush she was wearing stand out like two large circles on her cheeks. “I…I don’t remember.”
Heidi frowned. “How could you not remember? It was just last week. I had to leave early and you volunteered to finish getting her pills ready.”
“Oh,” Carol said weakly. She was leaning heavily against the wall, but she straightened herself, wobbling a little as she did so. “I…I might have.”
I took a subtle step backward, trying to position myself so I could get behind her.
“Did you know the sheriff thinks she might have overdosed?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.
Carol managed to look surprised. “He does? Oh my word.”
“Would you happen to know anything about that?”
“No, no, not a thing,” Carol replied. Her complexion was so pale, it was practically translucent.
“I think you do,” I said. My voice sounded surprisingly calm. “And I think you should probably tell us.”
Carol gulped audibly and Heidi was now watching with interest, confusion flickering in her eyes.
“You know, you really had me there for a while,” I told Carol. My eyes were locked on hers. “You fed me all the information I needed to consider Lila and George as suspects. And you even made sure I knew that Heidi was responsible for her mother’s medication, when the truth of what happened came out. I know you didn’t want her to take the fall—after all, she isn’t your enemy. You were hoping to frame either Lila or George, since you hate them both.”
She opened her mouth to protest but I continued.
“You hate Lila because…well, because she’s a witch.” There were no bones about it; Lila was an easy person to dislike, and if I were going to pin a murder on someone, she would be my first choice, too. After the sheriff, of course. “And George…well, you were resentful of all the time your best friend had spent with him. You were secretly relieved when they broke up, but you still harbored ill feelings toward him, so you would have been perfectly happy if he’d taken the fall for Greta’s death.”
Heidi’s eyes were huge now as they shifted from me to Carol. For her part, Carol was frozen in place, as if my words had cast a spell around her, cementing her feet to the floor.
“I never considered you because you had no motivation,” I said. “At least, I didn’t think you did. But now I know. Greta was your instructor, your mentor. And you both were entering quilts this year. You wanted to beat her, but you knew you couldn’t do it fair and square. So you killed her.”
“No, no, no!” Carol screamed. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and I didn’t know if they were tears of sorrow or tears of rage at having gotten caught. “That isn’t it at all!”
“No?” I arched an eyebrow. “Then what is it?”
She wrung her hands and was sobbing openly now. “I didn’t mean to kill her!” she cried. “I…I just meant to keep her from entering her quilt!”
And there it was, the confession I needed. “How?”
“I…I gave her an extra dose of one medication,” she said, hiccupping. “One! She’d told me that it blurred her vision and I thought it would be the perfect way to keep her from entering her quilt.” She made a face. “She wanted to enter the fall-themed one. She wasn’t even considering any of the others she’d made this year. I…I thought it would slow her down just enough so that she couldn’t complete it in time.”
“Well, it definitely slowed her down,” I said. “Stopped her cold.”
Heidi and Carol both gasped, and I winced at my poor choice of words.
“You should probably call the sheriff,” I said to Heidi.
She hesitated, then nodded, clearly shaken by what she’d just heard.
“You think I’m going to go to jail?” Carol shrieked. “It was an accident! I didn’t mean to kill her. She was my best friend!”
“It doesn’t matter what you meant to happen,” I said. “What matters is what did happen. By your hands.”
Carol fumbled with her purse and pulled out a pair of sharp silver scissors.
“Why in the world do you have a pair of scissors in your purse?” I asked.
She glared at me. “I’m a quilter. I always have scissors on me!” She held them up threateningly as she began to back away. “And I will cut you if you get any closer!”
I glanced at Heidi and she nodded.
Within seconds, she’d stooped to the ground and picked up the blue and white quilt at her feet. She tossed it into the air and it unfolded, landing on Carol’s head. I leapt toward her and tackled her to the ground, using the quilt to cover her. Carol shrieked and screamed but I stayed on top of her, tucking in corners so that she was trapped in a fabric prison.
She’d soon be going to a different kind of prison.
THIRTY SEVEN
“I think you found your calling.”
I made a face at Mikey. He was standing across from me, munching from a bag of freshly popped popcorn. Popcorn I had popped and handed to him at the Dorothy Days festival.
It was a beautiful, sun-soaked September day, and the park was filled with festivalgoers.
He grabbed a handful from the paper bag he was holding. “Although I do still think you make a pretty good private eye, all things considered.”
“Now that is something I definitely won’t be doing,” I told him. A little girl approached the table and I handed her a bag of popcorn. She took it with a smile and bopped toward the balloon animal booth.
“No?” Mikey asked, wiping his hand across his mouth. A shower of salt sprinkles dusted the front of his black t-shirt. “Why not? You’re good at. I mean, you were the one who figured out what happened to Greta.”
He was right. Of course, I had also been the only one to consider someone other than me as a potential suspect. The sheriff had decided as soon as he knew I’d found the body that I was the likely culprit, and had done nothing to further the investigation along because of it. And even though I’d sniffed down a few wrong trails along the way—namely, Lila and George—ultimately my snooping had led to Carol, the one responsible for meddling with Greta’s medication.
“Have you heard any more news about what’s going to happen to Carol?” Mikey asked, still munching on his popcorn.
After Carol had conf
essed to Heidi and me, and after I’d tackled and corralled her with the quilt, Heidi had called the sheriff. Once he arrived, she’d tearfully confessed to him and he’d reluctantly led her away in handcuffs. I’d been pretty sure he thought I’d somehow coerced her into a false confession.
The situation had taken a slightly different turn when it was discovered that Greta hadn’t actually died of the overdose of statin medication Carol was responsible for giving her. Melvin, the medical examiner, realized that although there were elevated levels of statins in her blood at the time of death, it had not been enough to kill her. In fact, it had probably done nothing more than give Greta a bit of a headache and some blurred vision, which was exactly what Carol had hoped it would do, so she wouldn’t be able to finish the quilt she’d been working on for the competition.
“Heidi mentioned that the murder charges were dropped, but that Carol would still face other charges. Assault, I think.”
“Prison time?”
I nodded. “Probably. It’s considered a felony.”
Mikey was quiet, thinking while he popped kernels into his mouth. I was quiet, too. I felt bad for Carol, despite what she had done. Yes, it was a horrible thing to tamper with her friend’s medications, and a more horrible thing to do because she’d done it in an attempt to unfairly secure her own win at the quilt competition. None of that was particularly forgivable. But I did have some sympathy for her. She'd lost her best friend, and had spent a good chunk of time believing her actions had been what had led to her friend’s death. That couldn’t have been an easy thing to live through, and I wouldn’t have wished that experience on my worst enemy.
Well, unless it was Sheriff Lewis.
Savannah Springs interrupted us then. She glided over to the table, clipboard in hand. She had styled her long dark hair into two braids, and she wore a Wizard of Oz t-shirt with an oversized image of Dorothy’s face.
“How is everything here?” she asked, her mega-watt smile already in place.