The Lover's Knot

by Clare O'Donohue

  When I stopped in front of the quilt shop, Jesse waved and drove past. I sat in the car for a minute before getting out. I was about to walk into the shop when I got another idea Jesse wouldn’t like. I turned and walked up the street.

  CHAPTER 41

  Marc’s apartment was above the pharmacy, in the center of town. I walked up the steps and tried the door. Locked. I knew it couldn’t be that easy. I went back down the stairs and into the pharmacy.

  “Hi,” I said to the pharmacist. “I’m Nell Fitzgerald. Eleanor Cassidy’s granddaughter. Is Mrs. Avallone around?”

  “Bernie,” the pharmacist called out. Bernie walked out of the back room. “Hi dear, what can I do for you?”

  “Do you own this building?” I said. “I mean I know you own the pharmacy, but do you own the whole building?”

  “That’s an odd question,” she said. “Yes, dear, I own the whole building.”

  “So you have a key to the apartment upstairs.”

  “Why, are you looking for an apartment?”

  “I’m just . . .” I tried to think of a lie, but I’d run out of them. “I’m just snooping. Is Marc’s stuff still in there?”

  Bernie walked into the back room, leaving me standing by the counter feeling confused and stupid. But only a moment later she was back out holding a key. “Jesse asked me to keep things the way Marc left them until he was done with the investigation. But he’s been through the place three times, so I assume he’s done.” She handed me the key. “Trying to get Ryan off the hook, I assume.”

  “Is that what your psychic intuition is telling you?”

  “Maybe.”

  I ran up the stairs to Marc’s apartment and opened the door. The apartment was small and messy. There was only one room with a large unmade bed, dirty white walls and a microwave on a small countertop. Paper was everywhere. There were travel magazines, car brochures and half a dozen credit card bills with PAST DUE stamped on them spread across the bed.

  I stood in the room looking at the mess. I pressed the message button on Marc’s machine and listened to a woman thanking Marc for the lovely night they’d spent together. The night she was referring to was the night before he’d been killed—the night he told me he had spent alone. Susanne had said it perfectly—I had dodged a bullet.

  “What should I be looking for?” I asked myself. “Where would someone hide fifteen thousand dollars?”

  There was a small painted bookcase in the corner of the room that seemed as good a place to start as any. There were at least a dozen books on architecture, a couple of dog-eared paperbacks and a stack of paper. I took each book out one by one and flipped through them. There was nothing. I went through each slip of paper. It was an odd collection of receipts, women’s phone numbers and assorted jewelry—mostly single earrings. There was a note on pink paper: “Please come tonight. I’m desperate,” but no indication who had written it or when.

  “Find anything?”

  I jumped. Jesse was standing in the doorway.

  “How did you find me here?” I was a little annoyed, even though I had no right to be.

  “When I followed you back to town I parked down the street and waited for you to go into the shop. When you didn’t, I followed you.”

  “I didn’t see you,” I said.

  “You weren’t supposed to.”

  I could feel my face turning red, so I decided to change the subject. “Is this anything?” I showed the paper to Jesse.

  He examined it. “It’s something, but it’s not enough of something to matter.”

  “You don’t think it’s a clue?”

  He smiled. “We like to call it evidence. But I don’t think this qualifies.” He sighed. “I’ll put it in an evidence bag, just in case.”

  I started to move toward the door, knowing I was going to be thrown out anyway. “I’m sorry, Jesse. I just thought I would look to see what was here.”

  Jesse came toward me, so I stepped back. I moved toward the wall near the door and he stood only an inch from me. “We’re in Archers Rest now, Nell,” he whispered, his warm breath hitting my cheek. “Do you know what that means?”

  “You can arrest me.”

  “Don’t make me do that. Please, just go home.”

  I paused for a moment, enjoying the way his aftershave smelled. Jesse had a strong presence, and standing this close to me, I felt protected and excited at the same time. It seemed to me that Jesse’s breathing had sped up slightly, but I couldn’t be sure. I was about to lean in and press my head against his chest when I realized just how stupid I was being. Jesse was on the verge of hauling me off to jail, not asking me on a date. I took one more step back, and as I did my foot caught on something. I bent over and picked up a key. I held it up.

  “It’s probably his apartment key,” he said.

  “He would have had that with him,” I said. Jesse opened the door and tried the key in the lock. It didn’t fit.

  “Would it be the key to the shop?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t he have had that with him too?” I said, but I took the key and compared it to my shop key. It wasn’t a match.

  “It’s seems like that one,” Jesse said as he pointed to another key on my chain. I compared the two keys. It was a perfect match.

  “What does that open?”

  “My grandmother’s house.”

  “So Eleanor gave him a key to the house.”

  “I don’t think so.” I grabbed my cell phone and dialed the house. “Hi. It’s me. Did you give Marc a key to your house?” It took nearly five minutes to find out that all of my grandmother’s keys were accounted for, and to explain that nothing was wrong. But I was a little creeped out by the fact that Marc had a key to someplace he didn’t belong. When I hung up I looked to Jesse, who seemed as confused as I was.

  “So how did Marc get the key?” Jesse asked.

  “Why did Marc get the key? That’s what I want to know.” Jesse dropped the key in an evidence bag. “I’ll find out. And for the last time, I’ll drop you home and you’ll stay out of this investigation.”

  I nodded. “No. Back at the shop.”

  “Good. And from now on when you have an idea, or a clue or a hunch, or anything involved with this case, you can call me at the sheriff’s office. I’m always happy to listen to a concerned citizen.”

  “Message received,” I said. “I’ll just be at the shop checking on Tom’s progress.”

  “He’s a good guy, and a hard worker. Eleanor is better off having him do the shop than depending on Marc.”

  “I don’t understand something. Why would my grandmother have hired Marc if he wasn’t up for the task? She’s not a fool.”

  Jesse shrugged. “Marc was good to her. He helped keep that old house of hers from falling in.” Jesse turned off the lights in Marc’s apartment, and I felt the darkness around me. “And he needed someone to believe in him. Your grandmother is a sucker for that kind of thing.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “It is, most of the time. But sometimes it gets you into trouble.”

  “Is that another way Eleanor and I are alike?” I asked. I looked up at him and we locked eyes. I was looking for something personal in his eyes, but all I got was the solid, emotionless stare of a cop. Jesse walked out of the apartment.

  I stood for a second in the dark and then followed Jesse out.

  CHAPTER 42

  Jesse dropped me off in front of Someday Quilts just as Tom and his helper were coming back from lunch.

  It was clear that a lot of work had been done in just a few hours, but the place looked a mess.

  “We framed the entryway between the two spaces,” Tom pointed out with a shy pride that I found endearing. “We have to do some patchwork, of course, and clean up, but we should be ready to paint Wednesday.”

  “That fast?”

  “We’re in a race, aren’t we?” He smiled. “I’m determined to be done with the remodel before your grandmother is finished with
the quilt.”

  The quilt. I’d completely forgotten to cut out the little flowers Nancy had given me, and I knew that I could not go home without them.

  “I’m going to be downstairs if you need me,” I said as I grabbed the bits of fabric from my purse.

  Downstairs Nancy had done a good job of cleaning out the office. All the boxes that had cluttered it were gone and it was a perfect empty space for my assigned task. I sat on the floor and set out my tools in a row: the template, the fabric, a pencil and scissors. Nancy had told me to draw the flowers on the wrong side of the fabric and cut them out on the line. Easy. So I laid the fabric down on the floor and drew around the plastic template of a flower. Then I cut exactly along the pencil marks. It was simple, and by the sixth flower it was really boring as well.

  I lay on the floor with the pile of fabric under my head and listened to the work upstairs. I could hear a power saw cutting wood for something, then lots of clanging and moving about. Jesse had been right to recommend his former brother-in-law for the job. He was serious and committed and really knew what he was doing.

  It made me wonder what noises Marc would have been making had he been up there doing the work. It was obvious to me now that he was all enthusiasm and ambition but he probably didn’t have the skills to do a good job. I thought about what Jesse had said, that Eleanor had given him the chance because she liked the idea of someone rising to the meet the challenge, as she had done. She must have wanted Marc to feel pride in having accomplished a difficult task. Maybe then he would have moved beyond his reputation as town womanizer.

  But someone else didn’t see such possibilities in Marc. To that person he was dangerous and expendable. I stared at the ceiling and listened to the noise so I didn’t have to think about who that person might be. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw something. I turned my head toward the doorway of the office and realized what it was.

  I reached out and grabbed the piece of green paper. It was a twenty dollar bill. It seemed careless of Eleanor and Nancy to have money lying on the floor near the back wall, but with the chaos that once ruled this room, I guess it was possible.

  I sat up and started on my fabric flowers again. However these turned out, at least I wouldn’t get in trouble for not having held up my end of the bargain.

  I had to admit that the flowers were quite pretty, even if my edges weren’t cut as precisely as Nancy or Eleanor would have done them. I laid each one out to make a kind of bouquet. Natalie was right. The entire time I was working on my flowers I hadn’t thought about my on-again, off-again fiancé, the murder of the town gigolo or any of the dozen or so secret spats and sad stories I’d encountered in Archers Rest. I just thought about the flowers. Eleanor and the other quilters in her group were constantly praised for industriousness. But all the time they were secretly using quilting to take a break from life. Well, I wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  I was on my last flower when I heard Tom closing up the shop, so I headed upstairs and home to Eleanor. I dropped my finished flowers on the kitchen table where she was sitting having tea and going over the day’s receipts. I sat at the table while she looked through my work.

  “These aren’t half bad,” she said. “Though I think the shape may be a tad traditional for the kind of quilt we’re making.”

  “These are the shapes Nancy told me to cut,” I protested. “I just spent the better part of the day cutting those.”

  “Well, that’s the artistic process isn’t it?” She smiled. “We started off with a traditional look, but it’s moving in a different direction.” When she saw my disappointed face, she added, “I’m sure we’ll find a use for them.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll make my own quilt with them.” The words came out of my mouth quickly, and to my surprise I even meant them. I liked my flowers too much to let them end up on a scrap heap.

  I could see Eleanor smiling, but she only said, “How were things at the shop?”

  “Good. But I found this,” I said as I held up the twenty dollar bill. “It was on the floor in the office.”

  “Well, it didn’t come from the shop’s deposits.” She pushed the large binder containing the shop’s balances toward the middle of the table. “Every penny accounted for since we opened the shop.”

  It was a neatly organized system, with debts in red ink and income in black, both printed in the neatest of handwriting. “This is kind of old-fashioned. You should do this on a computer. It would be so much easier.”

  Eleanor leaned over the notebook. “It’s worked for me for years.” She looked up at me and smiled. “But I suppose we could use some updating. We’ll have more inventory now.”

  It was an unexpected concession, but it also felt like she was beginning to see me as more than a granddaughter. Maybe I was becoming an ally, a partner. Eleanor peered into her empty cup.

  “More tea?” I asked. She nodded. Okay, maybe she didn’t see me as a partner, maybe she saw me as the help, but at least she saw me as capable of something. That had to be an improvement. I got up and put her kettle on.

  “I ran into Bernie,” I said tentatively, figuring she’d find out anyway. “I wanted to take a peek into Marc’s apartment.”

  I waited for a scolding, but none came. Instead she sat up and gave me a curious stare. “Find anything?”

  “A note asking to see Marc. Jesse said it didn’t mean anything.”

  “You were there with Jesse?” The curious stare had turned into astonishment.

  “More like he found me there,” I admitted. “He thinks I’m interfering with his investigation.”

  “You are.”

  I waved my hand dismissively, filled my grandmother’s teacup and sat down again. “I also went over to Natalie’s place to talk to her.”

  Eleanor’s mouth dropped open. “About what?”

  “Marc. What else?” I told her what I’d realized about Natalie’s baby. Eleanor shook her head and listened. “So, what’s the Jesse-Natalie story? Another love triangle?”

  “Heavens, no,” Eleanor said. “When Jesse moved back to town, his wife had just gotten diagnosed with cancer. She was new to the area, didn’t know anyone. Natalie was about her age and they became friends. Good friends, I understand. But Natalie was young and I think she got a bit spooked by the enormity of the illness. I believe she just backed off, stopped returning calls, that sort of thing. It really hurt Jesse’s wife. And anything that hurt her hurt Jesse.”

  “Still, that’s hardly a reason to be so hard on her about Marc.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “You weren’t here to see how he loved her. Even in her situation, it was impossible not to envy what they felt for each other.” She smiled a half smile at me.

  And even though I knew almost nothing about Jesse and his wife, I did feel a shudder of envy. “I suppose tragic circumstances make people closer,” I said.

  “I don’t know. I think they just bring out what you really feel for each other. If you are close, you’ll become closer. If you’re not, then a difficult time may well pull you apart.” She sipped her tea. “Did you talk with Ryan this afternoon?”

  I shook my head. Eleanor nodded at me, picked up my flowers and examined them again. “You did a lovely job with these. Did you enjoy making them?”

  “Yes. But don’t get any ideas.”

  “I think quilting is a lot safer than being an amateur detective, Nell,” she said, with a worried tone in her voice that made me feel a bit guilty for running around. “As much as you want to clear Ryan, you shouldn’t interfere anymore. Promise me.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to tell her that there was now another reason why I was looking for Marc’s killer—a reason I’d only just realized. It was fun. And now that I knew that, I wasn’t sure I could stop.

  CHAPTER 43

  I knew it was better if I appeared to stay out of the investigation for a while, just in case Jesse made good on his threat to arrest me, so for the next week I immersed myself in the renovations a
t the shop and helping my grandmother. I drove to the mall a few the shop and helping my grandmother. I drove to the mall a few towns over and bought a computer program for finances. By Friday morning I had a newly purchased laptop on the dining room table. Though I wasn’t much of a computer wiz and Eleanor was sitting beside me the entire time asking questions about how to copy or delete things, I still managed to put her store’s books and inventory onto the program.

  “It’s a pity they didn’t have these years ago,” she said.

  “They did have these years ago, Grandma. And now that you have this one, you should update the cash register at the store to one that’s computerized. That way you will always be able to keep track of the money and the inventory.”

  She eyed me with a flicker of suspicion that quickly disappeared. “I never lost a penny or so much as a spool of thread. But if you are so convinced this is the right thing, you have a new project to research, ” she said. “Leave me alone with this thing while I play with it. You can’t understand things unless you fiddle around yourself. You learned that with the muffins.”

  So I left her in the dining room and headed out for a walk. Nancy was running the shop that had now spilled out from the dining room to the front hallway. Tom was working hard at the store. I knew that Eleanor, Nancy, Maggie and Susanne had finished their parts of the quilt, and only Carrie and Natalie had outstanding blocks. Everything seemed to be moving along quickly. All except for Marc’s murder.

  I wandered around town for about twenty minutes, passing the police station three times. I hoped to run into Jesse, but I wasn’t having any luck, so I headed inside. The young uniformed officer from the day of the accidental break-in was sitting at a desk. He smiled as I walked in.

  “How’s it going?” he asked. “The renovation going okay? I hear Tom might be finished before your grandmother and the other ladies are done with the quilt.”

  “Maybe.” Everyone in town knew everything and felt everything was their business. I was still getting used to it, but for once maybe it would work to my advantage. “How’s the investigation going?”