by Gin Jones
"That would be perfect." Decorations were about the only things Matt hadn't thrown into our shopping cart, so now I could cross getting the centerpiece off my to-do list. I still had to pick up dessert from the Cinnamon Sugar Bakery, but that was on my way home, not out of my way like the florist was.
"My boyfriend has a huge wine collection, so he'll bring something to drink," Gil said. "How many people are you expecting?"
I laughed. "Including you two, I've got eight confirmed, but the way the list is growing, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with twice that many. I'm not too worried about numbers though. Matt insisted on getting enough groceries for three times our guest list, so while it might be standing room only, we'll have plenty of food."
* * *
Gil and I eventually settled down to business, reviewing the report I'd delivered and making sure I hadn't missed anything in the analysis. I headed downstairs an hour later, anxious to pick up dessert and then get started cooking the foods that needed to be prepared a day ahead of the big meal.
I only made it halfway across the lobby before I saw Dee and Emma coming through the entrance with Lindsay behind them, dragging her feet like a toddler at bedtime. That wasn't like her at all. Even when she'd been having trouble at work, it hadn't been for lack of enthusiasm or effort. Her reluctance now probably meant that she'd tried and failed to stop her grandmother from pursuing a particularly unwise course of action.
"Ha!" Dee said, slapping Emma's raised palm triumphantly. "I told you she'd be here."
"We heard what happened last night," Emma explained, "and we wanted to make sure you were okay."
"And check on the quilts for the parade," Dee said. "Did you get them?"
Once, I might have been offended by Dee's abrupt questioning without so much as a greeting, but it wasn't personal. There was never any small talk from Dee when quilts were in jeopardy.
"Matt is picking them up from the police right now and delivering them to my house."
Dee grinned. "So he's got a key to your place now, does he?"
"Just for this week." Possibly longer if things went well during our conversation about my syncope. Unfortunately, with everything that had happened in the last few days, it might be a while before I found the right moment for a serious discussion with him. I wanted to be sure he was over the trauma of finding Brooke's body before I gave him anything else upsetting to deal with. "He's helping with preparations for dinner tomorrow. And he's expecting me to be home soon, so I really need to get going."
"We can give you a ride," Dee said. "That'll save you some time, and you can give us the details about what happened last night while we're in the car."
I glanced past Dee to her granddaughter, who shrugged and gave me a look that clearly indicated I might as well give in because I wasn't going to win this argument.
"That would be great," I said, "but I need to stop at the Cinnamon Sugar Bakery first, or there won't be any dessert tomorrow."
"Let's go," Emma said briskly. "It's not Thanksgiving without dessert."
I led the way up Main Street to the bakery, where I had a pumpkin roll waiting for me. A few weeks ago, the owner, Maura Monroe, had been offering samples of the pumpkin cake with a cream cheese filling, and I'd been quick to order one for Thanksgiving, even though it was far too much for just the two people I'd expected to eat it. Now, it might not be enough.
Which was why when I saw the bourbon vanilla-bean pumpkin pie in the display case, I bought it too. It helped to know I had a ride, so I wouldn't have to carry both bakery boxes along with the quilt for the ten-minute walk home and risk of dropping one of the desserts if I was buffeted by the wind.
Fifteen minutes later, the desserts were safely transported to my house, where Matt was waiting inside. He greeted Dee and Emma warmly, but I thought he was still somewhat subdued, not his usual carefree self. There was nothing I could do about that for now, so I dropped the bag containing Brooke's quilt just inside the front door and left Matt to entertain the elderly women while Lindsay helped me get the bakery boxes stowed in the fridge.
On the drive home, I'd shared what little I knew about Brooke's death, and Dee hadn't proposed doing anything that would get her into trouble. So why was Lindsay still looking so glum? Was it something unrelated to her grandmother and the quilt guild? Perhaps something to do with why she'd made the unscheduled trip to Danger Cove for Thanksgiving week? Her job and her bell-ringing took up all of her time, so it had to be something to do with one or the other. Had she been suspended from her job like before? That seemed a more likely explanation than something to do with her bell-ringing. Unless things had changed since when she'd worked for me, bell-ringing sessions were generally cancelled during major holiday weeks that didn't require a special performance, like for Independence Day. As far as I knew, there was no Thanksgiving tradition that called for a bell peal and therefore no reason for her to be upset by a problem with it this week.
"What's wrong?" I kept my voice low enough that Dee and Emma wouldn't be able to hear us.
After a furtive glance past the kitchen peninsula in the direction of her grandmother, Lindsay said, "Nothing."
"How's work going?"
"Fine." Her tone was neither sarcastic nor upbeat, completely lacking in any clue that might add to the one-word answer.
"And your bell-ringing group?"
"Fine," she said in the exact same neutral tone.
It was clear that she wasn't going to open up to me right now, but I might be able to find out what was going on later if I could get her alone, completely away from Dee and Emma so she wouldn't have to worry about being overheard.
Lindsay and I joined the others in the living room, where the older women were leaning over the plastic bag that now held the miniature quilts, checking that they were all accounted for. Matt had dropped into a nearby chair and was staring at his phone, although there was nothing to see on the blank screen.
"Anything missing?" I asked the women.
"No." Emma looked up from the bag. "It looks like the cops didn't touch the quilts except to move them from the bin they were in. Matt says they kept it as evidence, because there were fingerprints on it. But the quilts themselves are still all neatly folded, just like I remember them, with no obvious damage."
"That's a relief." Not just because I would have felt bad for the quilts' makers if anything had happened, but also, more selfishly, because if there had been any damage, Dee would have expected me to drop all my holiday dinner plans and do some insurance appraisals immediately. "Do you want to take the quilts with you now or leave them here until tomorrow morning?"
"Actually, I was wondering if you could bring them to the quilt shop," Emma said. "Sunny's already offered to store the quilts overnight and bring them to the parade staging area first thing tomorrow. She'll be bringing other supplies then anyway, and the quilt shop has good security until then. But if we deliver them to her now, we'll be late for a meeting at the high school to finish getting the parade float ready for tomorrow morning. It's not safe to leave the quilts in our car until then, not after they've already been stolen once, and by the time we're done with the float, it will be too late to come back and get them from you because Sunny Patches will be closed."
The quilt shop was at the outer edge of my regular walking distance, and in any event it would be awkward to carry the bag of quilts that far. Plus, it would mess with my carefully planned timeline for getting the sweet potatoes cooked, cooled, and made into a casserole well before bedtime so I wouldn't be too exhausted the next day to enjoy the holiday.
I glanced at Matt, who said, "We'll take care of it. I can give Keely a ride to the quilt shop." He gave me a grin that was almost but not quite up to his usual standards. "I'm totally at her disposal for as long as she wants me."
I never doubted that. It was more a question of whether he'd feel the same way after he learned about my diagnosis and how that might affect his life. "Thank you."
"Now that we
know the quilts are safe," Dee said as she gathered up the top of the plastic bag and tied it closed, "we need to know who stole them."
"I'm not sure we'll ever know," I said. "Not now that Brooke is gone."
"The thief probably killed her to keep her quiet," Dee said.
"It's possible, but I really don't think her death had anything to do with the theft," I said. "After all, the quilts were right there in the same room with her body. If the thief was the killer and had wanted the quilts back, then why didn't he take them with him after he killed Brooke?"
"Maybe you showed up before he could grab them," Emma said.
Dee made an irritated sound. "It doesn't really matter if the thief and the killer are the same person. The police will work hard to find the killer, but they won't care about the theft, so they won't investigate it at all. Even assuming the killer is brought to justice, we'll still need to know who stole the miniatures. Otherwise, he might go after them again. And he'd be free to steal other quilts, since he got away with it this time, at least in terms of not having to go to jail."
"If there's another quilt theft, then you can file an official police report like you should have done the first time and let them take care of it," I said. "In a way, another theft would be a good thing. It would likely provide some new clues to the thief's identity. Right now, our only lead is dead. Literally."
"What about the tire gauge that was found at the scene of the break-in?" Emma asked. "The one from Brooke's husband's shop? What if he's the one who stole the quilts and that's why Brooke was able to get them back for us?"
"I can't see why he would have stolen them," I said. "And that gauge could have belonged to anyone. At least, anyone who's ever had work done at his repair shop. That rules me out since I don't have a car, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least half of the population of Danger Cove and an equal number of tourists have spent some time at his place."
"If there's no chance of catching the thief, then I suppose we should help the police find Brooke's killer," Dee said. "We owe it to her as a member of our guild. There must be more clues about that crime than about the theft. Or maybe stealing the miniature quilts was just practice for the real target: the big quilts Brooke made. Has anyone checked to see if any of them are missing? She had a real knack for mixing simple piecing with intricate embellishment. Some of her quilts are true works of art and could be worth a lot of money to the right collector."
"Dee's right," Matt said. "I've seen some of Brooke's quilts. Even did a feature piece on one a few years ago. Before you moved here, Keely. Her work was brilliant and innovative."
I thought about the bag that I'd dropped just inside the front door when we'd arrived a few minutes earlier. Brooke's quilt certainly fit the description of simple piecing and intricate embellishment. Despite its extremely personal theme—or perhaps because of that—it would qualify as a masterpiece and a work of art.
"I've seen her sampler quilt," I said. "She had her husband deliver it to me the night before she died."
"Oooh," said Dee. "Can we see it?"
"Not right now," I said. "It's so detailed that if you start studying it now, you'll miss your appointment to work on the float at the high school. I don't have time to study it today either, so it's going to be stored in my office, where it won't be tempting me, until after Thanksgiving dinner."
Dee looked like she was considering how she could have it all, the sampler quilt and the parade preparation, but Emma said, "We'll make an appointment to see it some other time. I'm sure you've got a lot to do to be ready for Thanksgiving."
"Thanks," I said. "It really is an amazing work of art. So you may be right that the killer wanted one of Brooke's larger quilts and originally took the miniatures by mistake. He might have thought he could swap them for what he'd really wanted, and when she wouldn't cooperate, he killed her. Or there could be some other motive for the murder. I don't know as much as I'd like about the victim or who might have wanted her dead."
Lindsay perked up. "I could help with that. Get some background information on her. What kind of work she did, where she came from, whether she's got a criminal record. That sort of thing."
I wouldn't normally ask Lindsay to do work for me, especially while she was on vacation, but the prospect seemed to have broken through her listlessness. Letting her dig in to Brooke's background would kill any number of birds with one stone: keeping Dee and Emma from doing anything reckless, giving me an excuse to find out more about whatever was bothering Lindsay, and collecting the sort of information that might help me to better understand Brooke's sampler quilt in order to appraise it. And then there was the matter of my own peace of mind. I couldn't help wondering if Matt and I could have headed off the killer if we hadn't been late for our appointment. I needed to know why Brooke had been killed, especially if it was, as I suspected, for reasons unrelated to the theft of the miniature quilts.
"If you're sure you don't mind helping out while on vacation," I said, "I'd be grateful for whatever you can find out about Brooke."
"I'll get right on it." Lindsay took her grandmother's arm and gave it a gentle tug toward the front door. "Just as soon as I get Dee and Emma to the high school."
CHAPTER FIVE
Matt was subdued and silent as we set out for the quilt shop. It wasn't the comfortable silence we often shared, so I said, "Do you want to talk about what's bothering you?"
He tensed and tightened his grip on the steering wheel before shaking his head. "Not yet."
He hadn't taken his eyes off the road, so I couldn't see their expression, but his body language was enough to convince me he didn't want me to insist. He'd given me time to share my secrets with him, so I had to return the courtesy.
I left him to his thoughts for the remainder of the brief drive. Once we arrived at Sunny Patches, Matt carried the bag of miniature quilts inside for me.
Before following him into the shop, I paused to appreciate the holiday decorations outside. The quilt shop was located across from the pier and the lighthouse in what was once a cannery but had long since been converted into a little strip mall. The businesses were getting a bit ahead of the holidays, skipping over Thanksgiving and going straight to Christmas. The exterior of the building was outlined with little white lights, and then each shop had a festive display in its front window. The insurance agency had a little replica of Danger Cove's lighthouse with a light that alternated between red and green, the dance studio had a small stage filled with costumed dolls set up as if they'd been caught in mid-performance of The Nutcracker, and the quilt shop had a Christmas tree festooned with garlands made of fabric rosettes.
Inside, strategically placed to be the first thing a visitor saw but carefully kept out of the direct sunlight that could fade textiles, was a display of holiday-themed fabrics. Everywhere else, there was bolt after bolt of quilting cottons, along with the various tools and notions needed to complete a quilt. Stacks of white batting folded into brick-like shapes formed an igloo in one corner.
There were only a handful of customers at the moment, outnumbered two to one by staff members wearing their easily spotted bright yellow sleeveless artist smocks with oversized pockets. They were bustling around the shop, unpacking boxes of inventory and affixing Black Friday sale signs throughout the shop.
The clerk at the register sent us into the back, where Sunny was working in a room generally used for classes. She was just above average height for a woman, with long black hair in a complicated braid and a chubby figure. She wore dark blue scrubs beneath her yellow smock, suggesting she'd come straight from the hospital, where she'd continued to work part-time as a physical therapist even after she'd opened the quilt shop. We'd met months ago during a quilt guild event at the museum, and I'd been to the shop a number of times since then to consult with her about the relative cost and quality of the materials used in a few of the quilts I'd been asked to appraise. I might need to do that again when it came to appraising Brooke's quilt, since I wasn't as fam
iliar as I'd have liked with the cost of supplies for embellishments like beads and buttons or how they might add to the value of the finished project.
At the moment Sunny was lining up an acrylic ruler in preparation for cutting a whole stack of fabrics that had been rolled out from their bolts and layered so as to alternate between red and green holiday prints. She was probably preparing some quick-piecing kits for customers looking for a relatively last-minute but still handmade holiday gift.
Sunny was so engrossed in her work that she didn't seem to have heard us enter. Matt let the bag of quilts fall to the floor with a slight thump to get her attention.
Sunny started and spun around, waving the rotary cutter's dangerously sharp edge like a weapon. It only took a moment for her to realize she wasn't under attack, and she leaned back against the table, letting her hand with the rotary cutter fall down to her side. "I assume those are the quilts for the parade."
I nodded, and Matt said, "If you'll tell me where you want them, I can carry them there for you."
Sunny called out for someone named Jeannie. "She'll show you where the storeroom is. You can put the bag on top of the boxes marked as parade supplies. There probably isn't room anywhere else."
A petite teen in a yellow smock and bright purple leggings came running into the room in time to hear the end of her boss's instructions. She and Matt left a moment later to secure the quilts in the storage room.
"I should leave you to your work," I said. "I can wait for Matt out front."
"No, wait. I'm always telling my patients to remember to take breaks from repetitive physical activity, and it's time that I heed my own advice. I've been cutting for what seems like hours." She set down the rotary cutter and flexed her fingers. "Besides, I'm dying to know what you can tell me about what happened to Brooke. I was so shocked to hear she'd been killed. It must have been even more shocking for you. Do you know who did it?"