The Lover's Knot

by Clare O'Donohue

  I reached in and pulled. As I did I fell against the fireplace. “Damn it.”

  “What did you say?” I heard Eleanor. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” I glanced at the envelope in my hand. My fingers were trembling slightly as I opened it. It was filled with cash.

  “Nell, what are you up to?”

  “I’m coming,” I said as I left the living room, nearly tripping over Barney as I did. My coat was hanging in the hall closet, so I stuffed the envelope into a pocket and headed into the kitchen for coffee.

  “Well, you were slow to start your day this morning.” Eleanor greeted me with a suspicious eye.

  “I know. I’m sorry,” I said as I gulped down the piping hot coffee and nearly burned off my tongue. “I have to head into town and check on the shop.”

  “That’s a good idea. And when you go to the police station ask Jesse to see the quilt Marc had in his hands. See how damaged it is.”

  “What makes you think I’m going . . . ,” I started, but what was the point of protesting? The woman had spies everywhere. “I’ll ask to see the quilt.”

  “I told you I was going to search the living room,” Jesse said as I handed him the envelope.

  “I was cleaning.”

  “The fireplace?”

  “Yes.” I stubbornly stuck to a story that he clearly he didn’t believe. “Besides, you said that I could bring you anything I found, any clues, any hunches, just as any concerned citizen would.”

  Jesse grunted but put on a pair of gloves, opened the envelope and began counting the cash.

  “How much is it?” I sat impatiently. I knew he would probably prefer I left the office, but I was going nowhere, and since, technically, the cash was not part of any crime, at least not yet, he didn’t throw me out.

  “Just over six thousand,” he said. He spread the dollars over his desk.

  “So Marc was hiding the cash at my grandmother’s.”

  “Maybe. Half the cash, anyway.”

  “Well, the other half was for the doctor.”

  “But he never gave it to the doctor.” Jesse looked at me. “So that money is somewhere.”

  “You said he might have gambled it away. So maybe he didn’t have time to get back to Eleanor’s to get the rest.”

  “How do you know it’s not Eleanor’s?” he asked.

  “We just put her books on computer. I saw. She’s got every penny accounted for. Besides, my grandmother doesn’t like leaving twenty bucks in the register overnight. There’s no way she’d store this kind of cash in her house.”

  “Okay. If someone knew Marc had this money, then they may have come to the shop looking for it. When Marc didn’t have it, he was killed so the killer could look for it.”

  “If Marc told the doctor he had money, he could have told other people. He could have flashed it around.” I could hear the excitement in my voice as it felt like we were getting close to the answer. “Have you gone through his phone records, seen who his friends are?”

  Jesse leaned back in his chair and hesitated. Then he leaned forward. “I’m only telling you this to stop you from running around town interviewing suspects. There’s nothing unusual.” He reached into a file and took out a list of numbers from Marc’s cell phone.

  “He called this 212 number a lot, including Friday,” I said. “He told me he never went into the city anymore, so who would he call there?”

  “Maggie’s daughter. That’s her cell number,” Jesse said flatly.

  “Why would he call Maggie’s daughter? You don’t think that’s odd?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. She’s his cousin. He’s Maggie’s nephew.” Jesse put the list back in its folder and looked at me for a long time. “Assuming this is Marc’s money and assuming that someone knew about it and was after it, that’s good news for you. It pretty much leaves your fiancé off the hook.”

  With all the fun I was having being a junior detective, I’d forgotten the whole reason I wanted to find Marc’s killer. I nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Jesse leaned over and put the blue box of invitations on his desk. “So you can mail these out. You left them here.”

  I touched the box lightly. “I will,” I said. “I just have somewhere I have to go first.”

  “Where?” Jesse asked as I walked out of his office empty-handed.

  CHAPTER 49

  Maggie answered the door before I had a chance to ring. “There’s coffee in the kitchen,” she said.

  Maggie’s home was large and traditional, with classic quilts hanging on many of the walls from the living room to the kitchen. Some were muted, others bright and playful. It was the sort of contradiction that mirrored Maggie’s personality exactly.

  “My blue period,” Maggie said as we noticed two blue and white quilts hanging side by side above the kitchen table. “So you want to find out why Marc called my Sheila.”

  “Yes.” I always felt intimidated in her presence. “I was also curious why you didn’t mention Marc was your nephew.”

  “He was my husband’s nephew actually,” she said gruffly. “I don’t like to take credit for how that boy turned out.”

  “Still,” I said, “you made it clear you didn’t think much of him and you never said . . .”

  “Didn’t see much of him.” She poured more coffee into my almost full cup. “He ingratiated himself to my daughter, though, and she has more tolerance for his kind.”

  “What kind?”

  “Well, she has that art gallery of hers in New York . . .”

  “So, she has a tolerance for artists.” I was confused and a little annoyed, and I knew both were showing.

  Maggie leaned in. “I have no issue with artists, young lady. Sometimes creative people live a little outside the lines, but it’s necessary. It’s good. You have to take a step back from accepted society if you are going to comment on it.” Beneath the print dress and tight bun was a bohemian. Who knew?

  “So what kind was Marc?”

  “A petty con. A drifter. He had no direction. He was always looking for the easy way. If he spent his days building furniture, like he always said he wanted to, I would have respected that boy. I would have encouraged him. But he spent his days talking about building furniture. And there is a difference.”

  I nodded. You can’t argue with that. Not that I would have argued with Maggie. I doubt anyone would have.

  “I’d love to see her gallery sometime,” I said. “I think I told you, I’ve always wanted to be an artist, or at least be around art. Maybe your daughter can give me some guidance.”

  Maggie got up from the table and rummaged around in a drawer. She handed me a card. “This is her business,” she said, and then she smiled at me. “I’m proud of you for moving forward like this. It’s important to go after your dreams.”

  The gallery was a long, narrow space on Manhattan’s west side. It had only twenty or so objects in it, but everything looked ridiculously expensive. A woman who could have been a supermodel in a previous life walked over to me and glanced up and down. Though her facial expression never changed from an insincere smile, it was clear what she was thinking—I did not belong in such a fine place.

  “Sheila?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m a friend of your mom’s. A friend of Marc’s.”

  Suddenly the look of bored superiority melted away and an actual smile took its place. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. How are you?”

  “Can we talk somewhere?” I said as I nodded toward the single customer looking at a painting near the front.

  “Are you looking into what happened to Marc?”

  “Yes,” I said, “in an unofficial kind of way.” She nodded, as if she suddenly figured something out. Then she looked me over. It took me a moment, but I realized what she was thinking. “I wasn’t a girlfriend,” I explained. “More of a friend.” I was digging a hole for myself, so I stopped talking and let her take the lead.

  Sheila
motioned me toward the cash register and away from the customer at the front. “Marc called me a few times, including the day he died,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when Mom called. She was so upset.”

  “She was upset?” I repeated. “I got the impression she didn’t like Marc.”

  “She didn’t. She liked him as a kid, he was really fun and creative, but he . . . I don’t know, he didn’t live up to expectations, I guess.” She stared off for a moment. “Still, she was crying when she called. And my mother doesn’t cry often.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Why did Marc call you?”

  Sheila shook her head. “He said he was going to make boxes. Carved boxes. And he wanted to know if I would sell them in my shop.”

  “Would you have?” I asked. Looking around, the gallery had a fairly eclectic mix of objects. It was more of a fine craft than traditional art gallery. There were ceramic bowls and blown glass pieces as well as paintings, sculptures and textiles.

  “Sure,” she said. “Marc was actually very talented. Not disciplined, but talented. He said he had a little money and he was going to use it to start his furniture business. But he was going to start small—with the boxes. If that went well, he’d make bigger pieces. He was quite excited about it.”

  “But you must have thought that was just talk,” I said.

  “I suppose I should have, given Marc’s track record.” Sheila smiled. “But he said he had been inspired by someone to turn over a new leaf, and I believed him. He’d even picked out a display area for the boxes.” She pointed to the center of the room. “I’d asked him to make me five, and we would see what happened.”

  The display case was filled with glass vases that had the texture of sand, as if they were unearthed from some archeological site. But a tag on the table explained that the pieces had been made by an artist in New Jersey. I could picture Marc’s boxes sitting there instead, even though I really had no idea what they would have looked like. Still, it was nice to think of Marc as happy, excited, focused—the man I knew—instead of the person I’d been hearing about for days. And strange to think I might have been the inspiration.

  The customer at the front of the shop waved toward Sheila. “Excuse me,” Sheila said. “I hope you find what happened to Marc. He really was a wonderful guy in so many ways.”

  I took one more look around the little shop. It was pretty. A place for up-and-coming artists to show their work. But it was something at the back of the shop that caught my eye. The quilts were small, but even from a distance they looked quite beautiful and remarkably familiar.

  I should have left, but I walked to the back wall of the gallery. Three two-foot square quilts hung on the wall, each with tiny appliquéd flowers, machine embroidered details, and intricate quilting.

  “They’re Nancy’s,” I accidentally said out loud. “They have to be.”

  CHAPTER 50

  I knew it would probably get me into trouble, but I had to call Jesse anyway and tell him what I’d learned at the gallery. I dialed his number as soon as the train back to Archers Rest had pulled out of Grand Central. It’s generally frowned on to make calls on the train, since tired commuters aren’t that interested in listening to the details of someone else’s day, but I didn’t care.

  Only it wasn’t working out as I had planned. Jesse wasn’t at the police station. I had to call Bernie to get Jesse’s mother’s number, who gave me Jesse’s. I could hear his daughter playing in the background, and I immediately felt guilty for interrupting their time together.

  “How did you get my number?” he asked me as soon as I identified myself.

  “What difference does it make?” I said. “I got it. I butted in. I snooped. Yell at me later.”

  As my voice got more exasperated, I could hear his voice relax. “What did you do?” he asked.

  I told him about my visit to Maggie and to her daughter’s gallery. Jesse didn’t seem too surprised by the idea that Marc was trying to sell carved boxes to an expensive gallery. “Except he didn’t actually make the boxes,” he pointed out. “He just talked about making them.”

  “But he would have needed money to do that. Maybe that’s why he only offered the doctor five thousand dollars.”

  “You don’t need ten thousand dollars to make boxes,” Jesse countered. I could hear Allie calling for him. “Look, Nell, I don’t know how many ways I can say this. You need to stay out of this. I can’t keep you from talking to Maggie or her daughter, any more than I can keep anyone in town from gossiping about this, but . . .” He stopped. “I’ll be in the office tomorrow. You should come by.”

  That evening I sat in the kitchen with a little notebook, writing out every clue and every suspect. If Jesse was going to let me be a part of the investigation, I wanted to have something to say.

  When Eleanor and Nancy finally closed up shop and Nancy left for the night, I stopped my work and made my grandmother dinner. While I cooked, she sat at the table looking over my notebook.

  “What is this?”

  I turned red. “It’s my list of suspects,” I admitted.

  “Carrie, Natalie . . . these aren’t suspects. These are my friends. Your friends,” she said.

  I put a plate of chicken tacos and rice in front of Eleanor and a second plate at my place. I sat down but was too excited with my theories to actually eat. I told my grandmother about my weeks of detective work.

  “Carrie needed money to open her own business. She said so,” I said. “Plus she was having an affair with Marc, then he started going after me, so she was upset and jealous and she killed him,” I said as we headed back to town.

  “Based on the fact that she gushed about him.”

  “And she had his keys.”

  “Why did he give her his keys?” Eleanor asked.

  “So they could meet at his place. They couldn’t exactly go to her house. They couldn’t get a hotel room in town. It makes perfect sense.”

  “If Carrie knew about the money. If she was having an affair with him. If she had his keys,” my grandmother reminded me.

  “Okay. Natalie. She had tons of motive.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  I looked at her. “You don’t think it was Natalie.”

  “She doesn’t have the stomach for that kind of thing.” I realized Eleanor was considering each suspect as carefully as I was. “Susanne had the same motive.”

  “I don’t think so. For all her faded glamour girl stuff, she’s a pretty smart person. If she were going to kill Marc, I think it would have been planned out,” I said.

  Eleanor smiled. “So we’re ruling Susanne out because she’s more of a premeditated killer and we’ve got a spur-of-the-moment murder on our hands.”

  “Do you think she did it?”

  “Not really. I think you’re right on that one.”

  “Ha.” I smiled. “Okay, who’s left?” Eleanor glanced over at me. “You said he didn’t do it,” I said.

  I didn’t feel like playing this game anymore, and I wasn’t hungry either.

  The next morning I went to Jesse’s office early. Maybe it was better leaving the investigation to the experts. As an amateur I kept coming back to the same suspect. I was anxious to hear what Jesse had come up with, especially if he finally was willing to be open with me about the investigation. The problem was, Ryan was the only suspect Jesse wanted to talk about.

  “We have to consider it so we can rule him out,” he said. “Ryan punched Marc on two occasions on the day he was killed. Plus he admits that he saw you and Marc kissing in the shop, so he knew where Marc was.”

  “He was at Moran’s Pub when Marc was killed.”

  “So he says.”

  “No. I checked with the bartender.”

  “You checked your fiancé’s alibi?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t want to say any more, but Jesse would find out anyway. “The bartender remembers him, but he can’t be specific about the time, and Moran’s is only a few blocks away. Besid
es, Ryan was on the phone saying he’d made a big mistake.”

  “About calling off the wedding?” Jesse asked. “Who was he talking to?”

  “A friend. I don’t know. What difference does that make?”

  “Did he tell you calling off the wedding was a big mistake?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Later.”

  “Nell.” I looked away from him. I knew his next question, and I didn’t want to answer it. “When did he tell you that calling off the wedding was a mistake?”

  “After the murder.”

  “After you expressed doubts about his innocence.”

  “I was mad at him about the wedding. I felt like he wasn’t being honest. But I never . . .” Jesse looked over at me.

  “What are you holding back?” he asked flatly.

  “Nothing.” I bit my lip but said it anyway. “He didn’t come into the shop.”

  “What?”

  “You asked me if Ryan came into the shop with me on the day Marc was killed. He didn’t. The only way he could have gotten his fingerprints on the stuff in that box is if he . . .”

  “Was in the shop after you left.” Jesse stared straight ahead.

  “Say something,” I prompted.

  “You should have told me when I asked.”

  “I was trying to protect him.”

  “And now?”

  I didn’t have an answer. Jesse waited for a moment, then opened a drawer in his desk.

  “I wasn’t sure whether I should play this for you, but I think I probably should,” he said.

  Jesse put a small tape recorder on his desk and popped in a tape. I sat down, with my wedding invitations still on his desk where I’d left them days before. They blocked my view and made me feel uncomfortable, so I put them on the floor.

  Jesse pressed play, and I heard his voice, “So if the wedding was off, why did you come up here?”

  “I felt like I owed Nell a better explanation,” I heard Ryan say. “She left her apartment, her job, her friends. I felt bad.”