by Mary Marks
KNOT READY FOR MURDER
“Can you see how the police might conclude the marriage thing gives you a motive to arrange for Mrs. Levy’s disappearance?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m more interested in who might inherit the business if Hadas is dead and Yossi were in prison for her murder. Do you know?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose it’s futile to ask you for names?”
“Yes, but I will share this with you. The business will stay in the Uhrman family.”
“You mean Ze’ev Uhrman’s family?”
He remained silent in a response I could only interpret as assent. Finally he spoke. “One word of caution, Martha. The people behind Ze’ev Uhrman’s death and Mrs. Levy’s disappearance are your worst nightmare. I can’t emphasize too much that any inquiries you make may prompt them to return to your house. And next time, they’ll be coming for you . . .”
Books by Mary Marks
FORGET ME KNOT
KNOT IN MY BACKYARD
GONE BUT KNOT FORGOTTEN
SOMETHING’S KNOT KOSHER
KNOT WHAT YOU THINK
KNOT MY SISTER’S KEEPER
KNOT ON HER LIFE
KNOT OF THIS WORLD
KNOT READY FOR MURDER
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
KNOT READY FOR MURDER A QUILTING MYSTERY
MARY MARKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
KNOT READY FOR MURDER
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
HANDY HINTS FOR HAND QUILTERS
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2021 by Mary Marks
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
The K logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2052-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2055-9 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-4967-2055-5 (ebook)
For my grandmother, Amy Rachel Doud, who created in me a love of quilts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A huge, heartfelt “Thank you” to everyone who helped make this Quilting Mystery Series: my mentor and writing coach Jerrilyn Farmer, my agent Dawn Dowdle, and my editor at Kensington, John Scognamiglio. Thank you for believing in me and in Martha Rose.
And to my fellow writers in the Friday workshop, thank you for all your valuable suggestions and feedback.
And to my husband, Timothy Gale Palmer, who gives me undying support and love every minute of every day.
CHAPTER 1
Using the side of my dinner fork, I concentrated on cutting neat, little squares in the potato kugel on my plate. Should I say something now or wait until everyone leaves?
My stomach fluttered with anxiety as I thought about my options. As much as everyone at the table will probably approve, shouldn’t Crusher be the first person to know? He’s been so patient . . .
I’d managed to reduce the kugel, a potato and onion casserole, to nine bite-sized pieces when my daughter, Quincy’s, voice dragged my attention back to the Sabbath table. “Earth to Mom. Come in, please.” All conversation stopped as seven pairs of curious eyes focused on me.
Embarrassment warmed my cheeks. “Sorry.”
Quincy continued to probe. “Is everything okay? You’ve hardly touched your food. Are you ill?” Since becoming a mother herself, my daughter had become keenly aware of exposing her infant daughter to germs.
I gave my daughter a tight little smile. “No, I’m fine.” Actually, I was more than fine. My name was Martha Rose, and at my age—still in my fifties but marching toward sixty—I had made an important decision regarding my future.
My sister, Giselle, lowered her fork and pinned me with laser eyes. “Then if you’re not having a stroke, give it up, Sissy.” Giselle was long on smarts but short on tact.
I learned I had a half sister only a year ago. Together we discovered the fate of our father, who’d gone missing more than thirty years before.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked.
Everyone sat at attention, eagerly anticipating my response. I sighed with resignation. Obviously I wasn’t going to be able to discuss this first with my fiancé, Yossi Levy, aka Crusher. I reached for his hand.
He encouraged me with a slight nod of the head. “Go on, babe. Whatever it is, I’ve got your back.”
I cleared my throat, found my voice, and gazed into his impossibly blue eyes, into the face of the man who waited patiently for me to overcome my fear of failure. “No more waiting, Yossi. I—I’m ready to get married.”
The table erupted into a chorus of “mazel tovs.”
He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly. “It’s about time.”
The rest of the evening he avoided looking at me. Something was wrong. Crusher had been proposing marriage almost every day for years. Now I was finally willing to become Mrs. Yossi Levy, he looked miserable.
Everyone began to chatter about having a wedding at Giselle’s estate in Beverly Hills. My sister and daughter vied for which of them deserved to be my maid of honor. Giselle plopped her back against the chair. “Fine. We’ll both be maids of honor.”
“And Uncle Isaac can sing the seven blessings,” Quincy said.
Crusher remained unusually quiet. I should’ve listened to my gut and said something to him first. For the rest of the evening, I sat on shpilkes, waiting for everyone to go home.
Quincy and Noah were the first to leave, bundling their sleeping baby girl in the sweet pink-and-white quilt I’d sewn for her. Uncle Isaac and his helper Hilda prepared to leave with Giselle and her fiancé, Harold. My eighty something uncle patted my shoulder
with a hand wobbly from Parkinson’s disease and whispered, “You’ve given me such nachas tonight, faigela.”
I loved it when he called me little bird in Yiddish.
“I’m glad I lived long enough to see you settle down with a real mensch.”
Apparently, my anxiety didn’t pass unnoticed. My sister waited for everyone else to walk out the door, grabbed my arm, and took me aside. “Something’s not right. You’ve been twitchy all evening.”
I lowered my voice. “Not now, G. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I closed the door behind my sister and paused for a breath. Water splashed in the kitchen sink, an indication Crusher was washing the dinner dishes, according to our well-established division of labor. If one cooked, the other cleaned.
With my heartbeat pulsing in my throat, I headed toward the kitchen, compelled by both curiosity and dread.
“I should’ve warned you first, Yossi. I’m sorry for blurting it out like that.”
Without looking up, he scraped table scraps off the plates and stacked them on the counter. The white Sabbath china was a family heirloom we carefully washed by hand to preserve the delicate cobalt blue and gold bands on the rim. “I couldn’t be happier, babe. But I wish you’d spoken to me first. There’s something I need to tell you.”
I moved over to the sink, stood next to him, and gently touched his arm. “What is it, Yossi? You know you can tell me anything. I won’t judge you.”
He turned off the stream of water and turned to face me. I’d never seen him that tortured. “We have to hold off on the wedding for a while.”
“Why? Have you changed your mind about wanting to be married?” A seed of anger took root in my brain, and I took one step backward in order to peer at his face. “Because if you have . . .”
“I haven’t changed my mind. It’s just that I’ve got to do a couple of things before we can make it legal.”
“Like what?”
“Like get divorced.”
I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly. “You’re married?” Sour heartburn shot upward from my insides. “You told me when we first got together you’d never been married. You lied to me?”
Crusher dried his hands on a towel and gently held my shoulders. “Not really. It’s a complicated story. I’ve never been married—in my mind, at least. But there was a wedding years ago. The marriage was never, uh, consummated. I was helping out a friend.”
“You mean like helping someone get a green card?”
He sighed. “I wish it was that easy.”
“Well what, then?”
He grasped my hand and led me to the cream-colored sofa in the living room, where we sat facing each other. He squirmed on the seat and coughed nervously. “Back when I was a student in the yeshiva, there was a girl, the sixteen-year-old sister of a friend of mine. Her name was Hadas. She got pregnant. Unfortunately, the father of her baby was already married to someone else.”
“How did you get involved?”
“One day when I was visiting my friend Ze’ev, we found Hadas sitting at their kitchen table, crying. She blurted out the whole story. She said everyone would be better off if she and the baby were dead. That’s when my friend concocted the idea of me marrying his sister and pretending I was the father. I mean, it was a lie, but under the circumstances, it was a matter of pikuach nefesh.” He referred to the principal in Judaism in which the laws could be ignored if—in doing so—a life could be saved. If he could prevent the girl from committing suicide, two lives would be saved.
I slowly understood the enormous mitzvah my future husband performed for the sake of the girl and her child. “Okay. I get it. You married her out of compassion. What happened next?”
“I left the yeshiva and took a construction job to support the two of us. That’s where I got the name Crusher. From working the rock crushing machine.”
“So, she’s the reason you never completed your studies?”
“No way. She was my excuse for dropping out. The truth is, I wanted to leave anyway. You know me. I’m not the kind of guy who can sit all day. We found a tiny, one-bedroom walk-up on the fourth floor in Brooklyn. She slept in the bedroom and I slept on a sofa bed.”
“Oh, come on. You want me to believe you never slept with her?”
“That’s exactly what I want you to believe because it’s true.”
“I think we need a drink.” I went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of wine from the half-empty bottle left over from dinner. I returned to the living room and handed him a glass. “I’m not criticizing you, Yossi. After all, this was a long time ago. Right?”
He took a sip from his glass and set it on the coffee table. “Right. A very long time ago. Like almost thirty years.”
“And the baby? What happened to it?”
“Hadas miscarried at five months. The baby didn’t survive.”
“Wow. You went through all that for nothing.”
“It wasn’t ‘for nothing.’ I got to leave the demands of the seminary life and she and her family got to maintain a good reputation. After she lost the baby, Hadas moved back in with her parents. Her brother Ze’ev, my friend, was grateful for the way I helped the family avoid a scandal. He gave me his solemn promise he’d help us with an annulment. The family got a lawyer to draw up the papers, which I signed and returned to them. At that point, my involvement ended. And that’s it. You have the whole story.”
I swallowed the last of my wine and stared into the bottom of the empty glass. “Not quite the whole story. How did you find out you’re still married? What happened to the annulment?”
He groaned and closed his eyes. “I don’t know why Ze’ev didn’t keep his promise, but those papers never made it to court. They were never filed. My sister, Fanya, knows the family. She was the one who broke the news to me about the annulment. She’s flying in from New York tomorrow afternoon. I tried to discourage her, but she can be stubborn.”
Crusher came from an Orthodox family, who wouldn’t dream of travel on the Sabbath.
“Something must be really important if she’s willing to fly on a Saturday.”
He raked his fingertips through his beard and looked at me sideways. “She’s not coming alone.”
My ears started to buzz. I thought I knew the answer before I asked, “Who’s she bringing?”
“Hadas.”
CHAPTER 2
I spent a restless night fretting over having to guess the reason for Fanya’s visit. My tossing and turning didn’t faze Crusher as he snored softly. Why is she bringing Hadas? Does Hadas want Crusher back after all these years? Why didn’t she get an annulment? How much of a threat will she be?
Had Crusher been totally honest with me? Even though my rational mind told me this present situation wasn’t his fault, he should have followed through with the annulment years ago. Bitter resentment crept up my gut and landed in the back of my throat. I finally fell into an exhausted sleep around three in the morning.
When I opened my eyes again, the clock read eight. The curtains were drawn shut, but they couldn’t totally defeat the gentle morning light from creating a warm glow in the bedroom. Every muscle and joint ached with a painful flare-up. I threw aside the down comforter, rolled out of bed, and hobbled to the bathroom to take my fibromyalgia meds. The face staring back at me from the mirror looked pinched and drawn with pain. Puffy bags sat under my eyes, testifying to a night with little sleep.
I raked a wide-toothed comb through my gray curls. Oh great. Crusher’s “wife” Hadas will still be in her forties. She probably has a perfect figure, perfect hair, and a creamy complexion. How can I compete with her? She might be younger than me, but I’m not going to let her waltz in and grab my future husband. If she wants to fight, I’ll give her a run for her money.
Saturday was supposed to be a day of rest. But I knew I wouldn’t relax until the house was clean and sparkling. I wanted my home—Crusher’s home—to be above reproach. God forbid Hadas should find a reason to criticize!
By the time I shuffled into the kitchen for my first cup of coffee, I was primed for combat mode. It must’ve shown on my face because Crusher came over to me and gave me a hug. “Morning. Are you okay?”
I stuck out a defiant chin. Does he think he can drop a bombshell about his marriage and expect me to welcome his wife in our home? “Hardly slept at all.” I brushed past him and walked over to the coffee maker sitting on the apricot-colored marble kitchen counter. I poured myself a large mug of Italian roast and plopped down at the kitchen table and glared at him.
Crusher reached into the oven and pulled out a plate of pancakes and scrambled eggs. My favorite breakfast. “I kept these warm for you.” He placed the plate in front of me in an act of contrition.
His strategy worked. The more I ate, the more benevolent I became.
Between mouthfuls of fluffy scrambled eggs, I managed a question. “Tell me about her. Hadas. Tell me what to expect.”
“I haven’t had contact with her since she moved back in with her parents.”
“Oh, come on. Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to the annulment? Didn’t you ever try to find her on Google or Facebook?”
He shrugged. “She’s not on Facebook. But my sister, Fanya, is friends with the family.”
I’d talked to Fanya on the phone a few times but never met her in person. She’d never once mentioned Crusher’s wife. “Since your sister was friends with the family, didn’t you ever ask her to find out about the annulment?”
“Once I asked her to find out why I never received the final papers. Hadas assured Fanya everything had been taken care of.”