The Alpine Quilt

by Mary Daheim

  In my agitated state, I slipped on the wet pavement at the corner and had to steady myself on—ironically—an empty Advocate newspaper box. It was going on eleven; Kip’s delivery crew should start putting out this week’s edition any minute.

  Toni was the only employee in the sheriff’s front office. She was talking to Charlene Vickers.

  “Oh, Emma,” Charlene said when she saw me, “isn’t it awful about Gen Bayard! To think we were all having such a good time at Nell Blatt’s house Sunday night!”

  Nell was one of Vida’s sisters-in-law, the wife of Osbert, one of Vida’s two brothers. Vida had never gotten along with any of the in-laws in her own generation, including Ernest’s family. She was on much friendlier terms with her many nieces and nephews.

  “Just be glad,” I said to Charlene, “that you were all together and happy with Gen for one last time. Had you kept up with her over the years?”

  “Somewhat,” Charlene replied, looking guilty. “Christmas and birthday cards. An occasional note. I blame myself. I’ve always been so busy raising the children and keeping the books and handling the money matters for Cal and the service station.”

  I nodded. “You also belong to several organizations, like our bridge club and the thimble club.”

  “I know.” Charlene sighed. “There’s never enough time to do everything.”

  In my opinion, there was too much time in small towns, which was why residents joined so many clubs and organizations. It was also why there were so many feuds and backstabbing. Too much propinquity. And yet there was a genuine sense of community, of belonging. Maybe living in Alpine wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, even to a transplant like me.

  “Everyone must have been thrilled to see Gen after all these years,” I remarked as Toni handed a sheet of paper to Charlene.

  “My, yes,” Charlene replied, “they were agog.” She turned to Toni. “Thanks so much. I assume Harvey’s or someone else in town carries these alarms?”

  “If you’re going with Brink’s, you’ll have to call the 1-800 number listed under their name,” Toni advised. “Unfortunately, we can’t recommend any particular alarm service company.”

  “I understand,” Charlene said. She folded the list and slipped it into her canvas shopping bag. “Honestly, Emma, with all these break-ins, you have to take extra precautions. We don’t want it to happen again at our house, even though the stereo was old and our insurance will cover the new TV. I feel so sorry for Ethel Pike having to come home to a big mess. The thieves didn’t do much damage at our place. I wonder if some of us Betsys should try to clean up the Pikes’ house before they get back from Florida.”

  “That’d be a nice gesture,” I said, edging away from Charlene to reach the half door in the reception counter. “That is, as long as it’s still not a crime scene.”

  “Oh, dear.” Charlene looked chagrined. “I hadn’t thought of that.” She turned back to Toni while I made my escape through the counter’s opening.

  Assuming the sheriff was in, I had the courtesy to knock. From the other side of the door, I heard Milo’s gruff response. “What now?”

  “I’m the one who should ask that question,” I snapped as I entered his office and slammed the door behind me. “Why didn’t you tell me about the leftovers going to the lab?”

  Milo shrugged. “Because it was in-house. Do you want it to get out that your church’s kitchen is stocked with poison?”

  I grimaced, recalling the women who had refused to take communion from the cup. “Okay, I’ll try not to kill you this time. Have you got the results yet?”

  “Just in,” the sheriff replied complacently. “We may not be able to do a full autopsy in SkyCo, but we do have enough equipment to detect poison, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  I had. It’d been some time since anyone—that we knew of—had been poisoned in Skykomish County. Clumsily, I sat down across the desk from Milo. “Well?”

  He seemed determined to be aggravating. For at least thirty seconds, he shuffled papers around on his desk, then stubbed out his cigarette in a clamshell ashtray. “I don’t want this broadcast all over town,” he said with a warning look.

  I was surprised. “Do you mean you’re not telling Fleetwood yet?”

  “That’s right.” His hazel eyes were steady as he stared at me. “You got it? Not even Vida should hear this, especially since tonight she has her radio show. I’m doing this as a favor to your brother. You can pass it on to him, but that’s it.”

  “Okay.” I remained surprised. Maybe Milo and Ben had a fishing date coming up. Fishing partners tend to trust each other.

  The sheriff cleared his throat. “I won’t read the scientific gobbledygook. What it comes down to is that the insulin was in the cheesecake dessert, probably the chocolate crust.”

  “Good lord!” I cried.

  “Seems that way,” Milo said in his laconic manner. “But there it is. The stuff is called glipizide, and comes in white tablets. They were crushed into a fine powder. Gen must have eaten more of the cheesecake than Annie Jeanne did.”

  “That’s true,” I said, remembering what Annie Jeanne had said about Gen eating three times the quantity as her hostess. “ ‘Piggy up,’ ” I murmured.

  “Huh?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. But Gen ate three slices. I assume they were fairly large. I vaguely recall seeing the leftover cheesecake on the counter. It was more than half-gone.”

  “Does Annie Jeanne have diabetes?” Milo inquired.

  “No, I’m sure she doesn’t.” In truth, I wasn’t sure, though Annie Jeanne wasn’t one to keep a secret.

  “Ben?”

  “No.” Nor, thankfully, was there any history of the disease in our family tree. “And certainly not Dennis Kelly,” I added. “On his busiest days, he survived on Twix bars.”

  We were both silent for a few moments.

  “All those women in the Burl Creek Thimble Club were friends of Annie Jeanne’s and Gen’s, weren’t they?” Milo noted as he lighted another cigarette. “How many of them belong to your church?”

  I thought back to the article we’d done and the photo we’d run. “Only one,” I finally said. “Debra Barton.” Debra was married to Clancy, who owned Barton’s Bootery, and despite being fellow parishioners, I’d never gotten to know her very well.

  “Hunh.” Milo again became silent, fading slightly behind a cloud of gray smoke. “Who else was at the party for Gen?”

  I reached for a tablet and a pen from the desk. “Let me think—Annie Jeanne, Gen, Debra, Ethel, Mary Lou Hinshaw Blatt, Charlene Vickers, Darlene Adcock, Edith Bartleby, Nell Blatt, Grace Grundle, Darla Puckett, Ella Hinshaw . . . oh, and Jean Campbell. Ethel was given a special award named after her for winning the blue ribbon at the county fair. It’s called the Sweet Betsy from Pike.”

  Milo looked as if he wanted to gag. “Women do weird things,” he said. “It’s like they’re still little girls.”

  “Men don’t do weird things, too? What about Jack Mullins giving Ed Bronsky an atomic wedgie after Mass three weeks ago?”

  Milo guffawed. “Jack did that? Damn, why didn’t you put it in ‘Scene’?”

  “Because it was dumb,” I replied. “Although not too dumb, considering the victim was Ed.”

  Sharing my opinion of Ed Bronsky, Milo snorted. “That’s the truth.”

  “What was the crust made of?” I asked.

  The sheriff consulted the lab report. “Crushed cookies, butter, powdered sugar, and salt. Not to mention glipizide.”

  “Ah.” The powdered sugar would camouflage the white tablets. The extreme sweetness of the cheesecake would mask any bitterness from the insulin. A picture of Annie Jeanne loomed in my mind’s eye: bustling around the kitchen, stuffing game hens, tip-and-tailing green beans, adding lemon juice to creamed cheese, crushing cookies into tiny bits, sprinkling glipizide into the mixture . . .

  What was wrong with that picture?

  Everything. But how could I
prove it?

  NINE

  “Annie Jeanne is not a poisoner,” I declared, looking Milo straight in the eye, “and it couldn’t have been an accident. That scenario doesn’t play for me. Someone had to introduce glipizide into that kitchen.”

  “I’ll admit,” Milo conceded, “it seems weird. But you know how these old spinsters get sometimes. Gaga.”

  I gave the sheriff my most pugnacious stare. “I’m a spinster. Am I gaga, too?”

  Milo was irked. “You know what I mean. You’ve had a kid, you’re not as old as Annie Jeanne, you’ve been—” He stopped, apparently embarrassed.

  “Around the block?”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yes, you did. You’re talking about sexual repression. You’re saying that women who don’t have sex get goofy. I’m saying that some people are . . . well, asexual. They either have no sex drive or it’s barely perceptible. In Annie Jeanne’s case, she’s an old-fashioned Catholic girl born and raised in a small town. She was a dutiful daughter; she’s always been a loyal friend. When she wasn’t taking care of her invalid parents before they died, she put all her energy into the parish, starting with playing the organ.”

  “From what I’ve heard you say, Annie Jeanne should have practiced using a different kind of organ,” Milo said dryly. “If you get what I mean.”

  I had to laugh at Milo’s uncharacteristic use of a double entendre. “Yes, I’m not completely dense. But music—even god-awful music—is an outlet for many people. Really, Milo, do you honestly believe Annie Jeanne murdered Genevieve Bayard?”

  “I can believe almost anything after all these years in law enforcement.” The sheriff paused, staring at my chest. “This sex talk is making me horny. Where’d you get that red sweater?”

  “On sale, at Francine’s Fine Apparel,” I retorted. I closed my jacket and stood up. “Good-bye, Milo.”

  “Is your brother coming to your place for dinner tonight?” he asked as I headed toward the door.

  “Yes.” I stopped with my hand on the knob. “No. He’ll probably stay with Annie Jeanne.” Milo was the sheriff; he could probably figure that out for himself. I turned around. I couldn’t stand it when Milo looked dejected and defeated. “I’ve got two rib eyes in the freezer. I was saving them for Ben, but I can buy some more.”

  His long face brightened. “Yeah? Okay, I’ll be there.”

  “Fine. We can listen to Vida’s program together.”

  “What about making love during Vida’s program? Wouldn’t that be kind of—” He winced. “Maybe not.”

  “I’ll see you around six,” I said, and left.

  Back at the office, I called Ben to tell him I’d bring lunch to the rectory. He said not to bother; Betsy O’Toole had brought a bunch of deli items from the Grocery Basket. Would I like to join them?

  It was going on twelve. I said I would, and drove off to St. Mildred’s twenty minutes later.

  Betsy had settled Annie Jeanne onto the sofa in the parlor.

  “Lying in bed won’t help her get better mentally,” Betsy confided as soon as I entered the rectory. “Your brother can use the office for meeting with people. He’s in there now, trying to catch up on his workload. Father Ben and Bernie Shaw are going over the books. The Sunday collections are down since Father Den went away.”

  We were almost to the parlor. “That’s natural, I suppose. The parishioners have to make sure they can trust a new priest and that he won’t make off with the Sunday envelopes.” Or worse.

  Annie Jeanne was gazing into space when we walked into the room. She gave a start when I said hello.

  “Emma! You shouldn’t take time away from work to tend to me!” she exclaimed. But before I could say that I was on my lunch hour, she tugged at the bright green, yellow, lavender, and orange quilt that covered her slight body. “Look! Gen made this for me years ago, before she moved. I’ve been using it ever since. Isn’t it lovely? She designed it herself.”

  It was certainly colorful. The pattern was either suns or stars or maybe both, which, I guess, made sense, since the sun is a star. “Very nice,” I said, pulling a side chair up close to the sofa. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Oh . . .” Annie Jeanne sighed. “Better, physically, I guess. Otherwise . . .” She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture.

  “Give yourself some time,” Betsy said in her practical if unimaginative manner. “Once your body’s recovered, your mind will get better, too. You shouldn’t feel guilty about something you didn’t do.”

  “But I made the dinner,” Annie Jeanne protested, her voice rising.

  Betsy put a firm, freckled hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “Stop that. You weren’t the one who added the poison.”

  I realized that Betsy and Annie Jeanne didn’t know about the lab results. Milo had ordered me to tell no one but Ben.

  “That’s the problem,” Annie Jeanne asserted, though her voice was calmer. “Who would have put insulin—or whatever that poison is called—into the ingredients? No one was here that afternoon, at least not in the kitchen.”

  “You were here the whole time?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Annie Jeanne nodded vigorously, then put a hand to her mouth. “Well, no, not the entire afternoon. I had to run to the store to get vanilla. I wanted the white kind, not the dark. But I wasn’t gone more than twenty minutes. Father Ben was here while I was out.”

  But not in the kitchen, I thought. Father Fitz had always kept the church unlocked. He’d felt that anyone at anytime should have access to the Blessed Sacrament. As times changed, Father Den had locked the church as well as the rectory at night. Ben followed his lead, but had decided to lock the rectory during the day when neither he nor Annie Jeanne was on hand. To gain access, church volunteers had to wait until one of them was around. Otherwise, the door was open. Consequently, if Ben was in his office and Annie Jeanne stepped out, a mischief maker could come right through the front door.

  “You see?” Betsy said to Annie Jeanne. “The poisoner could have nipped in while you were gone. Father Ben would never know.”

  “That still makes it my fault!” Annie Jeanne insisted. “I should have locked the door!”

  “But you don’t do that,” Betsy argued. “Why would you change the routine in broad daylight as long as the rectory was occupied?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve got to serve lunch. Jake and I have donated staples and some extras to replenish the kitchen.”

  “You’re so generous!” Annie Jeanne called after Betsy before turning to me. “Aren’t the O’Tooles wonderful?”

  “They’re good people,” I said, and meant it. It was easy to overlook their habit of feuding in public. To Betsy and Jake, it wasn’t a quarrel, it was foreplay.

  Wheedling answers out of Annie Jeanne was tricky, not only because by nature she had a difficult time keeping focused, but because I couldn’t reveal the glipizide’s source on the dinner menu.

  “I don’t think you ever mentioned what you ladies had to drink,” I said as casually as possible. “You never know these days what gets put into products before they ever get off the shelf.”

  The thought seemed to buoy Annie Jeanne. “Oh, isn’t that the truth? Those aspirin tamperings a few years back were so dreadful! Innocent people dying!” She paused, apparently ruminating about past poisonings. “Drink,” she finally said. “We had sherry before dinner. It wasn’t a new bottle; I use it mostly for cooking. I made coffee to go with dessert, decaf from a canister I’ve been using for the past few days. Gen took hers black. I used sugar and cream. Well, not real cream—milk. That was all.”

  Bernie Shaw was saying good-bye to Ben in the hallway. Both men peeked into the parlor.

  “How’re you doing, Annie Jeanne?” Bernie inquired in his hearty style. “You’d better get well quick. You don’t want to leave Father Ben here in the lurch.” He winked, as was his habit.

  “Oh, no, of course I don’t!” Annie Jeanne looked as if she’d never considered
her parish responsibilities until now. “You’re right, I must regain my strength.”

  “You will,” Bernie said cheerfully. “You have a good heart and a good constitution. Be well. I’ll see you later.” Bernie and Ben proceeded to the front door.

  It had occurred to me that if I threw out a couple of hints to Annie Jeanne, she might be able to figure out for herself which part of the dinner had been poisoned.

  “Do you know what glipizide tablets look like? That’s the name of the insulin form that was used,” I added for clarification.

  Annie Jeanne frowned, then wagged a finger. “I do know. Ethel Pike takes glipizide. I was with her once when she had to take her medicine. She wasn’t happy about me seeing her do it, though. Ethel hates to admit she’s diabetic. I can’t think why; there are worse things than diabetes.”

  “What did her tablets look like?” I asked.

  “Um . . . they were white, like aspirin, but a different shape. Squarish or triangular. I forget.”

  I waited for Annie Jeanne to put two and two together. But she merely sighed and shook her head.

  “You could disguise the pills somehow,” I mused.

  “I suppose.” Annie Jeanne didn’t seem interested. Instead, she was fingering the various fabrics that made up the quilt Gen had given her. I was getting impatient. She didn’t seem to understand that her situation was awkward, if not downright precarious. But I suspected that this had always been Annie Jeanne’s way of dealing—or not dealing—with life.

  Betsy entered the room, pushing an old-fashioned tea cart laden with sandwiches, chips, raw vegetables, and potato chips. “Luncheon is served,” she announced, and bobbed a curtsey. “I made you some of our soup from the deli, Annie Jeanne. It’s turkey noodle. I’ve got crackers here, too. I’ll bring tea and coffee later, unless you’d like juice or milk.”

  “Tea’s fine,” Annie Jeanne said meekly.

  My pastrami and Swiss cheese on light rye was delicious. Maybe I should make the effort to pick up more lunch items from the deli at the Grocery Basket. Ben and Betsy both had roast beef on whole wheat. Annie Jeanne toyed with her soupspoon.