“Did he tell you that?”
She smiled, but it was not a happy smile. “No. Quite the opposite. He went on and on about his marriage to Rita,” she said. “That day in the kitchen when you thought you walked in on something, George was on the verge of tears, talking about how much he loved her. I didn’t quite know what to say to him.”
“So why drag you up here? Why drag any of us up here?”
“That was what the picnic was about. He suggested we go for a walk in the woods for that ridiculous picnic.” She looked as if she was about to cry. “Don’t judge me. I feel foolish enough as it is. I just wanted to know . . . I guess I’d always wanted to know that he made a mistake by choosing Rita, and I thought maybe once we were alone, talking over old times, he’d admit it. Maybe tell me his life had been hard, that he always has to give in to her. She’s not a nice woman.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said. “I think everyone’s noticed.”
“Exactly.” Bernie’s voice got louder. “I swear to you that if he had told me he’d made a mistake, I would have told him about Johnny, about how happy our marriage was, how close I am to my children and grandchildren, how good my life is. I would have hit him with all of it. I wanted to make him feel like a fool.” She started laughing a sad, hollow laugh.
“It didn’t happen that way?”
“No. Not at all. He told me that he wanted to be friends again. Me, him, and Rita. The three of us. After all these years, after everything.” She stood up. “I was so upset; I just got up and walked away. And that was the last time I ever spoke to him.”
I walked over to her and took her hand. As gently as I could, I asked a question. “How did you get the blood on your blouse?”
“As foolish as I felt for having believed that George still cared for me after all these years, I felt even more foolish for having stormed off. It was exactly what I’d done forty-five years ago, only then I didn’t give him a chance to explain,” she told me. “The more I walked around, the more I thought that with age comes wisdom or at least the realization that storming off doesn’t solve anything. I went back. At first I couldn’t find him. I thought he had gone, but one tree looks just like another. I walked a little farther and I saw him lying on the ground. When I got close, I could see that he’d been shot. I tried to help him, I swear I did, but he was dead.”
“But you didn’t go for help?”
“I covered him with the quilt. I knew it would get ruined, but it was my quilt. I thought it would. Keep animals away from him. And then I retraced my steps. I was going back to the inn but . . .” She sighed. “I know how this is going to sound, but I got scared. I started to walk in a different direction, and then I got lost. I doubled back to where George was and I saw you and Jesse discover him. I didn’t know what was going on. I just ran back to the inn.”
“But you didn’t call the police. You went to your room, changed clothes, and hid the blouse, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “I knew it would look bad, the way I’d been carrying on about him. And since you had already found him, I knew the police would be there right away. I didn’t see anything, so I couldn’t help the police. It was stupid, Nell, but I just got scared thinking that everyone would assume I’d killed him.”
“But, Bernie, we’re your friends. We wouldn’t have suspected you.”
She raised one eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have? With the way I’ve been carrying on? Honestly, Nell, I would think less of you if you hadn’t, for at least a moment, considered me a suspect.”
I hugged her. “Then you will be happy to know that I did, at least for a moment. But I’ll tell you something—Jesse never did. He even suggested McIntyre search your room because he knew whatever he found there wouldn’t point to you as a killer.”
She smiled her first relaxed smile of the morning. “He’s a good judge of character, Jesse. It’s probably why he’s so fond of you.” She pulled back from me. “You believe me now though?”
“One hundred percent,” I said.
“So what do we do?”
“We go over the list of suspects, pore over the evidence, find the killer, and go home.”
“That should be easy,” she said. “Everyone up here seems to be hiding something.”
CHAPTER 38
“What have you two been doing?” Eleanor sounded more worried than angry, but I immediately felt in trouble the way I used to as a child when I’d visit her at Someday Quilts and get caught making a mess of her displays.
“We took a walk,” I said.
“And had a nice conversation,” Bernie added. She rested her head for a moment on my shoulder. “I could use some breakfast. Is anything cooking?”
“The chief of police is what’s cooking,” Eleanor scolded. “He’s in the kitchen and he wants to talk to you, Bernie Avallone. It seems he has something urgent to discuss.”
I grabbed Bernie’s arm, and we headed into the kitchen together, with Eleanor just steps behind us. Susanne was pouring coffee, and McIntyre was sitting at the kitchen table, chatting with Jesse about the Winston High School baseball team. Whatever urgency he’d felt about talking to Bernie seemed to have been forgotten.
“So you’re back.” He smiled when he saw us walk in. “I thought you might have skipped town.”
“We have no reason to skip town,” I said, still holding Bernie’s arm.
“I’m sure you don’t, ladies. I just need to talk to Mrs. Avallone.” He nodded toward Bernie, who was shaking.
“I haven’t done anything,” she said quietly.
“I still need to talk to you. Alone.” There was a no-nonsense quality to McIntyre’s voice that I recognized as the same cop tone Jesse would use whenever he wanted to convey that, although we were friends, he was the law.
Bernie looked to me, and I smiled sympathetically but I didn’t see anyway out. Susanne, on the other hand, wasn’t having it. She stepped between Bernie and McIntyre.
“Let me tell you something,” she said. “Bernie is one of the finest people I know. She not only would never hurt anyone, she would—and she has—gone out of her way to be there for her friends.”
“As I imagine they would for her,” McIntyre said.
Susanne looked on the verge of either crying or yelling but she did neither. “We’re not protecting her. We don’t have to. She’s a good person who does the right thing. In fact, the only reason she came up here is because that man, George, asked her to.”
I waited and prayed that McIntyre didn’t make the connection, but it took him only seconds.
“When did George Olnhausen ask you to come up here?” McIntyre turned to Bernie.
“He called me a few days before we came,” Bernie stammered.
“Didn’t you tell me that the first time the two of you had spoken in more than forty years was when you arrived up here a few days ago?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Susanne turn white.
“I just meant . . . ,” Bernie started but gave up.
“She was trying to protect Rita from finding out that her husband had looked up an old girlfriend,” I said. “Her daughter told me that Rita was the jealous type. She went crazy if another woman even looked at her husband.”
“I thought Mrs. Avallone didn’t care much for Rita Olnhausen,” McIntyre said to me. “I can’t imagine why she would try to protect a person she didn’t even like.”
“Well, then you don’t know Bernie. You don’t know the kinds of things she would do,” Susanne sputtered.
“No, ma’am, I don’t. But I’m going to find out.”
“Chief, far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but you’re making a mistake you will regret,” Eleanor said. “I think that a competent lawman could see that Bernie is just the victim of unfortunate timing. It can’t be her fault that someone decided to kill that man the same week she was here.”
“I understand your frustration, ma’am.” McIntyre leaned forward in his chair. “I believe all of you that Mrs. A
vallone is a good person and a good friend. I think you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep, and this is some of the finest company I’ve seen in a long time. On the other hand . . .”
“There is no other hand.” My grandmother looked about ready to pounce on the police chief, who sat just a few feet away. To his credit he looked mildly embarrassed for having caused such a fuss.
I saw Jesse look over at Eleanor and smile sadly. She seemed to understand that he was telling her it was best to stop arguing and to let the police chief have his way. She backed up a few inches and leaned against the kitchen counter, seeming to accept, as we all had to, what was about to happen.
McIntyre got up. “Mrs. Avallone, I need you to come into town with me.”
“Why?” Bernie asked.
Jesse shook his head at her. “He has questions,” he said quietly.
“You can ask the questions here,” I said, in a last-ditch effort to stop things from going further.
“If it’s about the blood on my blouse, I can explain,” Bernie said.
“Yes, ma’am, it is. And a few other things,” McIntyre told her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll drive you to the station myself.”
“Are you arresting her?” I asked.
“Not right now.” He turned toward Bernie, blocking me. “If you don’t mind, ma’am.”
“I’ll get my purse,” Bernie said meekly, and disappeared out of the room.
McIntyre walked over to me. “I’m just going where the evidence takes me,” he said almost apologetically. “You can call over to the station in a couple of hours, and I’ll let you know what the next step will be.”
“She didn’t do it.”
“I’m aware that you all think so,” he said, and walked out of the kitchen.
We were all silent for a minute until Susanne said quietly, “Bernie told me about the call last night. She said she had talked to you about it, Nell.”
“She did.”
“She said she wanted to be honest about everything. I just assumed she told him the truth about talking to George.”
“Of course you did, dear,” Eleanor said. “She’ll clear it up. Not to worry.”
“We need to help Bernie,” I said, stating what everyone was obviously thinking.
“How do we do that?” Susanne asked. “I’ll do anything to help Bernie. I really will.”
Tears started rolling down her face, leaving us all to assure her, again, that Bernie had gotten herself into this mess by lying to McIntyre in the first place.
Jesse got up. “I think we could all use a cup of tea,” he said. I watched him squeeze Eleanor’s hand. “And then we need to put our heads together and come up with a strategy and perhaps the name of a good lawyer.”
I turned to him. “What other things? McIntyre said he wanted to talk about the blood and other things.”
“A witness. I don’t know who.”
“A witness to what?” Eleanor moved past me and was practically on top of Jesse.
“I don’t know exactly,” Jesse admitted, “but I assume he means a witness to the murder.”
CHAPTER 39
There was nothing that could be done in town. That was what everyone said. I fought it and lost. Standing outside the police station wouldn’t help. Eleanor kept saying that the truth was the most direct way out of this mess.
“Then what do we do?” I asked.
“We find the killer,” Jesse said.
“Who do we think it is?” Eleanor asked. “Could it be a stranger?”
“If it’s a stranger, then we’re cooked,” I admitted. “But this place isn’t easy to get to from town. There’s only one road leading here and a car would have passed by the inn.”
“What about a hiker?” Susanne asked.
“No one from outside this inn could have known George was going to be in the woods that day,” Jesse told her. “And McIntyre has said, and I agree, that given George’s height, the shooting wasn’t in error. George even had his wallet on him, so it wasn’t a robbery. I really think it was someone here.”
“That leaves Rita, the students in Susanne’s class, or one of us,” I added.
“I think we can safely eliminate us,” Eleanor scolded me.
“I’m just trying to think like McIntyre,” I said.
“Then what would he do?” Susanne asked.
“What he has been doing—talking to each of the students alone,” I said. “It’s what we have to do. Problem is, with the class canceled and the main floor pretty much cleaned and painted, I don’t think any of them will be back.”
“So we have to go to them or get them back.” Jesse finished my thought.
I was frustrated and scared. I kept thinking that Bernie was at the police station explaining her psychic gifts and her belief that George had been pining for her. I could only imagine how that would go over with a man like Chief McIntyre.
Susanne seemed past her frustration and excited about a new idea. “I’ll call each of them and suggest we work on a group quilt, something that can be used at George’s funeral,” she said. “I’ll tell them it’s a tradition among quilters.”
“It is?” Jesse asked, surprised.
“It was, and they wouldn’t know if it weren’t. Women have often made quilts using pieces of the deceased’s clothing as a way to preserve their memory or draped their coffin with a favorite quilt. And in pioneer times, sometimes when a woman was mourning a lost child, or husband, other women would bring her fabric to piece as a way of occupying her thoughts while she grieved.”
“It hasn’t been done too often in the last century, except maybe in the AIDS quilt,” my grandmother added. “Though it’s a nice idea.”
“We’ll get them back in the classroom and start talking about George and see if it leads us to our killer,” Susanne said.
She looked to me for approval. “I like it,” I said. “But I don’t think our killer is just going to announce himself.”
Susanne looked at me with confidence. “Leave it to me.”
“That leaves Rita and Joi,” Eleanor said. “We can hardly ask them to work on the quilt.”
Under normal circumstances she was right. But these weren’t normal circumstances. We were desperate. “Why not?” I asked. But I didn’t wait for an answer.
I took the steps up to the third floor two at a time. I was determined to come up with a reason why Rita should join us by the time I reached her door. But I didn’t have to. Just as I was about to knock, Joi surprised me by opening the door to Rita’s suite.
As soon as she did, my determination left me and I felt, suddenly, that my suggestion was out of line. “I’m coming to see if you want any breakfast,” I said instead.
“My mother’s not hungry right now, but I guess I should come down and get something.”
“I also wanted to let you know that we’re asking the students to help us make a memorial quilt for the funeral. The class and this inn were George’s dream, and we thought . . .” I was scrambling.
I felt bad that my words made Joi cry, not just because I’d made her cry—I assumed that, given the situation, she was crying a lot these days—but because my words were insincere. We weren’t honoring her dad. We were trying to reveal the killer, even if that person was her mother.
Joi finally composed herself. “I can’t think of anything nicer. It’s really one of the reasons I quilt. It’s such a caring community, you know? And to think after all the neighbors have done for my mother, to do something so personal . . .” She couldn’t continue.
An hour later the students were back in the classroom, ready to help with this latest project. On the first day they’d held back, having been pushed or persuaded or forced to take a class they didn’t want to take. Now they were excited. Pete and the twins were helping one another pick out fabrics. Frank was telling stories about George, to help those of us who didn’t know him well. Even Helen, who had been so against continuing the class after George’s death, was enthusi
astic about our latest endeavor. But this, as she pointed out, wasn’t for entertainment. It was to help others. And that made it okay. Though neither Joi nor Rita had joined us yet, we were all anxious to get started.
“So this is a tradition?” Pete asked “I think that’s nice.”
“It’s a lovely one,” one of the twins said. “We were going to suggest it but didn’t think it was our place.”
Susanne nodded. “Jesse and Eleanor are joining us. We’re lucky to have Eleanor since she’s so experienced. And Jesse . . .”
“Has no idea what he’s doing,” Jesse finished for her.
Frank laughed. “You’ve been sucked in like the rest of us. But you’ll like it.”
Helen sighed at her husband’s words in a manner that was nearly impossible to ignore, but Frank seemed to manage it.
“What do we do, boss?” Pete asked.
I could see that Susanne was thinking. “We’ll each make a block,” she said finally. “Sort of a journal quilt. We’ll each draw or piece or embellish a swatch of fabric in a way that reminds us of George. When we’re done, we’ll sew the blocks together.”
The students needed no further explanation. They each picked up a square of black flannel and began sorting through fabrics. I watched as Jesse positioned himself near Pete, my grandmother stood between Frank and Helen, and I took the twins.
“I’m not sure what to do,” I said honestly. “I barely knew him.” One of the twins was sketching the inn onto a piece of muslin. She looked up at me, wrinkling her nose. Her hair covered her earrings, so I couldn’t use Susanne’s method of identification. Instead I guessed.
“Alysse, you must have the same problem.”
She nodded. I’d guessed right. “It is hard to think of what represents him. I’m going to do the inn. I understand this place was his dream.”
“That’s an amazing idea.” I glanced at her sketch again and marveled at her accuracy. “You’re quite an artist,” I said. “I don’t think I could do as good a job of getting the inn right even if I were looking at it while I sketched.”
The Double Cross Page 18