Dog-Gone Murder

by Marnette Falley

  “I’m glad you think so,” Po said, throwing him a warm smile over one shoulder as she popped some green beans in the microwave. “I’m afraid Maggie and I are going to eat and run tonight. We want to meet the rest of the Bees at Selma’s.

  “Ah, right,” Max said. “Queen Bees night.”

  While these Tuesday night get togethers were not official meetings, Po almost always attended. So Max was used to this evening routine.

  Many of the Elderberry shops stayed open on Tuesday nights. And Selma kept the store open until 9 p.m. She also made sure the back table was available for them, and really enjoyed these relaxed meetings.

  It was a chance to chat and sew and relax. A rejuvenating time to escape into the joy of their textiles and threads with comrades who understood the endless appeal of every project.

  True to their mission of relaxation and normalcy, Maggie and Po pulled out of the drive a few minutes after 7 and were ensconced in their favorite chairs at Selma’s back table 10 minutes later. Selma had a reliable college student working for her, who was thrilled with the evening hours, so Selma and Susan both got to join them.

  Phoebe typically missed on Tuesdays. Her boys’ bedtime was an almost sacred ritual. So she was home tucking them in.

  Eleanor was there. She’d brought a plate of lemon bars, one of her favorite cookies. “I’m always hoping that when I’m sour I can strike a balance with sweetness that’s so good you guys will still gobble me up,” she laughed any time she brought them. And it was true, the mix of sweet and tangy sour was practically irresistible.

  “You sure never have to worry about taking home leftovers when you bring us these,” laughed Susan.

  There seemed to be an unspoken agreement among the friends not to discuss the traumatic events of the past coupleof weeks. Instead they talked about the things they always talked about. Color and stitching. Projects and sketches for the ideas kicking around in their heads for down the road. The next exhibit that someone was thinking of pulling together. And they enjoyed each others’ company tonight as much as ever.

  Eleanor had brought her project, “‘Endless Stripes’ is the current working title,” she joked. She was still arranging and rearranging her many strips of fabrics, and Po continued to love the results.

  Po had taken a few of the leaves she was liking better, and she worked on making a couple more. She seemed to be happier with them the more small elements each leaf had. “They’re just more interesting,” she said, as she showed them to Eleanor.

  She laughed. “You like to make it hard,” she said. “But I certainly can’t argue with your results. They look beautiful.”

  Kate had brought some striking fall-flavored squares she’d made at least a year ago. “Or embarrassingly, maybe it was two years,” she said with a frown. She had pieced all the gold, rust, brown and burgundy fabrics into squares, but had never welded them into one piece.

  “What have you been thinking about it that’s holding you up?” asked Selma, who asked this question of fabric shoppers every day.

  “It’s just feeling wrong,” Kate said. “If I could explain why, I’m sure I could fix it.”

  “Why don’t you come with me, and we’ll look at them with some different fabrics?” Susan suggested. “Maybe you need something with a little more contrast.” And they wandered off to try some other combinations.

  With Susan helping Kate, the quilting on their cat quilt for the benefit stopped, so Selma took a turn to keep the momentum going. Susan had been working hard on it, and had most of the cats quilted. Her work added a dimension that Po found thrilling. And it was more exciting for her, she thought, since she hadn’t done the work herself.

  When she’d come in, she’d looked closely at what Susan had done, and marveled at her finesse. “You always managed to do enough, but not too much,” she said with a smile.”

  “I’m so glad you think so,” Susan said. “I want it to be perfect, of course. And I feel like I’ve had to make a million decisions without you guys in the past two days. I’m totally relieved that you like it.”

  “I love it!” Po assured her. And the other Queen Bees reinforced her enthusiasm, leaving Susan feeling completely content with her contributions.

  Maggie had brought a set of squares she’d bought at an antique store on her last lake vacation. “I had to,” she said when she’d first shown them to the Queen Bees. “I just kept thinking about the woman who’d gotten so far on this project but not finished. I sure will need someone to finish the not-quite-done projects that I’ve got stuck in all my closets.”

  She got some, “oh my, me too” moans in response.

  “If you’re getting into that business, you could sure help me out,” Kate told her.

  “Well, we’ll see. Maybe the impulse will pass,” Maggie responded.

  Tonight she was ironing the squares, which featured a large flower basket pattern. And Po had to admit, the bright colors—orange and gold and turquoise, mostly—were captivating.

  “I bet those are from the late 1950s,” she said, looking over at Maggie’s work.

  “They’re not perfect,” Maggie said. “Whoever did them had even more trouble than I do getting the corners to match. I think she was a little impatient. But somehow, I find that appealing.”

  “It’s going to look great, Maggie,” said Leah.

  She was sitting quietly at the table knitting. “I know,” she said when Maggie looked over at her knitting needles with her eyes raised. “Where’s my project? But one of my friends at the college is about to get a new granddaughter. I have to focus or I won’t be done in time.”

  And under her deft fingers, a small hat was forming into a darling strawberry. The ripe red berry was the bottom of the hat, with some green seed flecks. When she got the body of the hat deep enough, Leah would knit on some green leaves and a stem.

  “I love your berry hats, Leah,” said Kate, reappearing with Susan. “And the strawberry might be my favorite. Although I’ll never forget the time you made the eggplant. That one was so cute.”

  “I still love the blueberries, too,” Po said with a smile. Leah had knitted a blueberry for Po’s last little granddaughter when she was born, and she looked darling in it. She had bright blue eyes that picked up the color. The pictures were still some of Po’s favorites.

  Before the friends knew it, it was time to call it a night. “I’ll bring the quilt by tomorrow night so you can do the binding, Po,” Susan said as Po and Maggie headed out. “That sounds perfect,” Po said. “I’ll be ready.”

  “That was great,” Maggie said to her with a smile on the short drive back to Po’s house, where she’d left her truck. “So fun. Totally normal.” “Yes, it was,” Po agreed. “Perfect.”

  CHAPTER 22

  In the next few days, Po couldn’t help feeling there was something they were overlooking. She looked at all her pictures of the clinic again. She thought over everything they knew about Jarrod and Jack Francis and tried to figure out a next step that could prove one or the other of them guilty or innocent of dognapping or murder. She reviewed Maggie’s visits again and listed the most commonly visiting clients in order. That list started with Mercedes. The top spending clients. Also topped by Mercedes. The client with the highest bill per visit. “Of course,” Po said to Hoover, who was standing by for results. “Mercedes.” But her lists didn’t seem to get her any closer to any answers. They did seem to spell bad news for the future finances of Maggie’s clinic if Mercedes and her dogs were really out of the picture. “Great,” sighed Po after an hour at these exercises. “More bad news. That seems almost impossible.”

  She checked in with Maggie, who was struggling to get herself and her team back in a routine that seemed more normal and comfortable. “It could be better,” Maggie said during one of their calls. “It’s obviously going to take a while to get over a co-worker’s murder. Some of our clients have called, and it’s hard to know what to say to them. I’ve had a few ask questions when they’ve
been in. If we suspect anyone. Who it could have been. Why anyone would do such a thing. The first time it happened, Lynne burst out crying.”

  “Oh, my,” Po said in sympathy.

  “Still, I guess it could be worse,” Maggie said. “We haven’t had a fire yet.”

  Po laughed. And gave thanks that Maggie could still make jokes, with all she was facing.

  “How does Aaron seem to be doing?” she asked Maggie.

  “He came to talk with me today,” Maggie said. “He was questioned about Catie’s murder, and I know that was upsetting him. But he had an ironclad alibi that day. He was at a full-day photography workshop for one of his classes. So I have to think that moves him down the list of suspects.”

  “Clearly the police think Catie’s death is related to the other issues, then,” Po said.

  “Yes, I think so,” Maggie said. “And I sure do, too. It just seems like too much coincidence. But I sure can’t imagine what the link could be.”

  “Well, maybe Catie knew something about Fitzgerald’s disappearance,” Po speculated.

  “You mean she was behind it?” Maggie asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Po said. “I mean, maybe. But maybe she just noticed something that could be incriminating to someone else.”

  “That’s interesting,” Maggie said. “Let me think about what she could have known. Maybe I’ll look at all the work schedules for around that time and see if I see anything.”

  But the next time they talked, they hadn’t come up with anything new.

  “I’m tired of dead ends,” Maggie said wearily.

  When Po wasn’t busy thinking and worrying, she was working on binding the quilt. Susan had dropped it off with the quilting done on Wednesday afternoon.

  “Oh, Susan,” Po said. “It looks wonderful. I love what you did …”

  She smoothed her fingers over the swirls Susan had stitched into the border.

  Susan smiled. “I’m so glad you like it,” she said. “I was happy with it, too.”

  Po always thought the quilting added a lot to the piece. But this time, it seemed it gave the final quilt even more dimension than normal.

  As she did the binding, she enjoyed the patterns of the stitching. Susan had used a variegated thread on the swirly border, and the change in color seemed to give it movement and energy.

  They’d chosen a black-and-white check for the binding, one of Po’s favorite fabric patterns. Something about it managed to seem modern and yet comfortable and classic. Po had a pile of coiled strips of fabric ready to go. And she’d sewn it on the otherwise finished quilt Wednesday evening. So over the next couple of days, she settled into her grandmama chair whenever she could to carefully stitch the folded edge of the binding to the back of the quilt, giving their special piece of jointly created art a self-contained frame. This stage was actually one of Po’s favorites, giving her contemplative moments and a calm, repetitious job that left her in an almost meditative state.

  When she started, she felt sort of antsy, full of bottled up energy. She wasn’t even sure she could sit and do the necessary handwork. But when she started she found her typical calm eventually arrived. And while she didn’t achieve a miraculous breakthrough in understanding that a calm mind sometimes brings, she did feel more centered.

  “We’ll get it figured out,” Po thought to herself, during one stint in her grandmamma chair when she was stitching the binding. “I know we will. And everything will get back to normal.”

  On Friday night, she finished and pressed the binding, and she took the quilt to Adele’s for the benefit the next night. The Queen Bees had decided to skip their normal morning meeting, for once, and make the benefit their official meeting. So Po just called Maggie and Susan to let them know the quilt was completely done and delivered. She knew they’d

  be thinking about it. The next day, she thought, they could celebrate another achievement together.

  “Too bad we’ll still have so much of this dark cloud hanging over us,” Po thought as she finally drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 23

  Po wouldn’t have to wait forever for the other shoe to drop, of course. On Saturday morning, Po’s phone rang at 10. “Can I come over, Po?” she heard Kate say.

  “Of course, Kate. Is everything alright?” The horrors of the past few days made her say this. And she sat with her heart in her throat as she waited for the answer.

  “Uh huh, everything’s fine,” she said. “I just need to talk to you.”

  “OK,” Po said. “In that case, I can’t wait.” “I’ll be there in five minutes,” Kate said. And she was true to her word.

  She pulled up in the driveway on her bike, hair flying, and propped her preferred vehicle by the front door, as she’d done since she was old enough to ride. Then she knocked gently before she let herself in.

  “I couldn’t stand it,” she said, giving her godmother a hug. “I had to come tell you in person.”

  “Tell me what,” Po asked, holding her back to look at her.

  “They arrested Jack Francis this morning for Catie’s murder,” Kate said. “P.J. called to tell me.” She shrugged and gave Po a small smile. “I’ve been asking him about it fairly frequently.”

  Po laughed. “I’m sure you have,” she said. She remembered Kate’s stubborn streak as a 4-year-old, and as a 14-year-old. She didn’t think much had probably changed. In other words, the slim young woman standing before her was a force of formidable tenacity.

  “Well, P.J. said I could know as much as they’d tell the reporter,” Kate said. “She’s been hounding him for information, too, so at least I’m not the only one.”

  “What else did he tell you?” Po asked.

  “Here’s the bare bones,” Kate said. “They found the murder weapon. A tire iron. She was bludgeoned on the back of the head.”

  “How awful,” Po said quietly.

  “They found her in the kennel, but the water was turned off. It looks as though she was cleaning the cages when he attacked her. They also found a big stash of cash hidden in the Jack Francis’ wing of the house. That’s not necessarily a crime, of course, but it doesn’t look good when he’s been talking so publicly about being strapped.”

  “But why would he kill Catie?” Po asked.

  “That part is not entirely clear,” Kate said. “Either the police don’t know, or they’re not releasing what they suspect, since P.J. won’t say. But I think it looks like she must have known something that implicates him in Mercedes’ disappearance, don’t you?”

  “It does look that way,” Po agreed.

  “He was supposed to be at work at the time, but wasn’t,” Kate said.

  “Do you think this means Aaron is off the suspect list?” Po asked.

  “It seems like he should be,” Kate said.

  “That’s good news at least,” Po said, “although I feel a little bad thinking any of this is good news. But still.”

  “I know it,” Kate said. “It’s all so terrible. But imagine the injustice of arresting that boy if he hasn’t done anything.”

  “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,” Po quoted. “I guess I’ll just start hoping that the good here is for Aaron,” Po said.

  “I’ll pick up the afternoon paper,” Kate said. “Then we can see what spin the reporter puts on it.”

  “Sounds good,” Po said. “Should I buy my own, or will you bring it by?”

  They agreed that Kate would stop back by later. And with that, Po sighed, feeling some of the week’s unbearable tension release. Maybe they were finding their way to the end of this nightmare.

  That afternoon Kate came by as promised. “Here it is,” she said, flourishing a newspaper as she walked through the front door. “I picked it up at the corner.”

  “Hey, now,” Po said, as Hoover practically tripped her in his excitement to peer out the front door as she went to close it. “You go out back and give me a minute of peace.”

  Then she put on a kettle to boil as
Kate sat down to read the article. When she finished, Kate pushed her unruly mass of curls over one shoulder, her classic gesture of impatience, and handed Po the article.

  “What do you think?” Po asked, looking up when she’d finished and putting her reading glasses down on the solid coffee table.

  “I can’t decide whether to be frustrated or happy,” Kate said, jumping up to tend to the kettle, which started whistling. “I was hoping to learn something. Get a spark. You know,” she said. “On the other hand, it looks like P.J. told me absolutely everything he could.” She smiled at Po. “He gets points for that, you know.”

  “I really do adore that young man, Kate.”

  “I know you do. And you are easily distracted by the matter of my heart,” she said with a smile. “It seems like we have bigger fish to fry today.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Po said with a smile. “Back to fish.”

  About two sips into her cup of tea, Po realized Hoover hadn’t come back to the door.

  “I wonder where he is,” she said to Kate. “He isn’t usually that interested in hanging outside if there’s company in here.”

  “I’ll go take a look,” Kate said. “After all, I know the corners of your yard intimately.” Which she did. She’d logged as many hours outside on tag as she had inside on hide and seek.

  She grabbed a jacket and went out as Po watched. Her first step was to check the gate. Hoover didn’t have any qualms about taking advantage of the meter reader’s lack of caution if it meant he could explore the neighborhood at will. But no, he should still be inside.

  Shrugging at Po with a smile, Kate called to him, and then headed to his most likely refuge, a row of ancient forsythia bushes growing near the back fence. The bushes were almost 6 feet tall, and the slender branches almost touched the ground, forming a round cave of sorts with a cluster of tough stems near the center.

  Seconds later Kate came running back around the edge of the green barricade.

  “Po, call Maggie. There’s something wrong!”