‘Why, this is nice.’ Mary walked through the front door of the apartment and stopped in surprise.
Cassandra held one end of the tape measure for Ellen and turned to smile at Mary. ‘Yes, it is very nice.’
A large window looked down on the side yard of the Plym house. The kitchen porch was at the back of the house and was barely visible through the trees that provided privacy for the Plyms but did nothing to block the view of the brick driveway and the street. The dining-room veranda and the morning room were on the opposite side of the house, but the front porch … Mary stood at the window, wondering if she moved back just a little … you couldn’t see the front porch but you could plainly see the front walk. There was a streetlight almost directly opposite the walk, right where it joined the sidewalk. Anyone who came out of the Plym house by the front door would be visible, day or night. She turned back to examine the room.
The staircase ran up one side of the carriage house, so the entry to the living room opened directly into a large, well-lit and comfortable room, a dining alcove at the far end. The kitchen must be behind it, forming an L. A small hall opened immediately to the left as you entered, leading to a bath and at least one bedroom. The rooms seemed good sized, the windows large, the overall effect one of compact but comfortable living. The furnishing didn’t give quite the same impression. Clean and serviceable, there was nothing attractive or interesting about the beige sofa or the two brown recliners. The lovely quilt thrown over the back of the sofa and the quilted pillows that sat in the recliners stood out in sharp contrast. Lorraine’s work? If so, Lorraine was indeed talented. Mary walked over for a closer look.
Mary didn’t quilt. She had quite enough projects to fill her time, but she remembered her grandmother sitting in her chair, her quilting square in her lap, bags of scraps of material stacked on the dining-room table. Quilting had been an obsession with her, and Mary had learned at an early age to appreciate the artistry involved, even though she had no desire to follow in her footsteps. Lorraine seemed to be in her grandmother’s category. ‘These pieces are beautiful. Did Lorraine do the quilt in Richard’s room?’
Cassandra looked blank. ‘I didn’t even know she quilted.’ She started toward the dining area, looked out the windows, examined the pine floor and entered the kitchen. ‘This is nice and sunny. Oh. Look at the appliances. They’re almost antiques, but there’s a nice laundry room …’
A door opened. A door? What door? She looked at Ellen, who raised an eyebrow. They walked into the kitchen, Millie at Mary’s heel. Cassandra had disappeared.
The laundry room was large, with lots of cupboards, another large window and an open door. Millie headed for it. Mary grabbed her leash just as she stepped onto a porch. A stairway descended from it and ended in a service yard below. Assorted garbage cans sat neatly, and cleanly, on a concrete pad at the base of the staircase, a newly planted vegetable and herb garden on the far side of it.
‘My, my.’ Mary stood at the top of the stairs and watched Cassandra wander through the neat garden rows. ‘That must be Caleb’s project. He’s the gardener. At least, he does all the yard work.’ She called down, ‘I had no idea all this was here.’
‘No one else would, either.’ Ellen stood on the little porch, also watching Cassandra. ‘You can’t see this staircase from the street, but I don’t think you can see it from the Plym house or the other houses, either. It’s totally private back here. It would make a really nice patio.’
‘Hmmm.’ It was indeed private. ‘Let’s go take a look at the rest of it. It’s getting late and I’d rather not be here when Caleb comes home. I know he gave permission, but still …’
Ellen grimaced. ‘Good idea.’ She called down to Cassandra, ‘We’re going to take pictures of the rest of the apartment. Do you want to come back up or should we meet you back at the other house?’
‘I’m coming.’ Cassandra headed for the staircase, with only a quick look back at the garden and the large old California oaks beyond it. ‘It’s nice here.’
Mary and Millie were already back inside. Mary examined the kitchen appliances with a dubious eye. Millie sniffed the floor in the forlorn hope Lorraine might have missed a crumb.
Ellen’s opinion of the appliances wasn’t any better than her aunt’s. ‘The Plyms weren’t much on updating, were they? Poor Lorraine doesn’t even have a dishwasher.’
Mary thought there were worse things you could be without but didn’t say so.
Ellen, her tablet once more in hand, addressed Cassandra as she walked into the kitchen. ‘Are the appliances the Duxworths’ or did the Plyms supply them?’
‘I have no idea.’ Cassandra stared at the stove with distaste, walked over, opened the freezer door and shuddered. It was as full of ice as it was food. ‘Does it matter?’
‘It does if the Duxworths bought them and plan to take them when they leave. I’ll add it to my list of questions for Lorraine. The cabinets are all right. The drawers seem to pull on runners … What’s this?’
‘What’s what?’ Mary was caught by the tone in Ellen’s voice. She walked over to peer into the drawer Ellen had pulled out. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘That.’ Ellen pointed at a key lying in the drawer, a piece of cardboard attached bearing the initials SMCH. There was no mistaking Mary’s handiwork or what the key opened.
‘That’s a church hall key.’
‘Seems to be.’
‘They have two of them?’
‘Seems so.’
Mary didn’t say anything for a moment. She just looked at the key. Finally she looked at Ellen. ‘They might each have a key, but what’s one doing hanging in the Plym house?’
Ellen, her mouth thinned out to a straight line, shrugged.
‘I think we just added another thing to ask Lorraine.’
A soft chirping sound interrupted Ellen. She looked around, and so did Mary.
‘It sounds like a bird is trapped in here, but I don’t see one.’
‘Or a smoke alarm that needs a new battery.’ Ellen made another note.
Cassandra looked up from her investigation of the stove. ‘It’s the motion detector. Richard must be back.’
‘Motion detector?’ Ellen looked around, confused. The noise seemed to be coming from a white monitor on a small desk beside the counter. There was a row of green lights and one that was blinking red. ‘Is it that thing?’
Mary walked over to it and watched the light blink. The chirping she ignored. Or tried to. Millie didn’t. She was beside Mary, head cocked, staring at the monitor, then started to howl. At first softly, then louder, as if trying to drown out the chirping.
‘Hush,’ Mary told her. Millie howled on.
‘Caleb wasn’t supposed to have this on while we were here.’ Cassandra reached over and hit a switch, a deep frown of displeasure on her face.
The machine fell silent. So did Millie.
‘What is that thing?’ Ellen stared at the machine, which now showed nothing but green lights. ‘Why does Caleb have a … oh. Miss Emilie. Is this the motion detector?’
Cassandra nodded. ‘It’s the monitor. I was worried about leaving her in that big house all alone every night, especially since she didn’t seem very …’ She broke off and shook her head slightly.
‘Reliable?’ Mary suggested.
Cassandra smiled and nodded. ‘Lorraine said she’d sleep over there, but Caleb didn’t like that idea. He said he could get an alarm set up and they’d put the monitor here. That way they’d know if she tried to wander at night. It seemed like a good idea. I told him I’d pay for it so to get a good one. He did and set it up before I left. He and I discussed where to put the monitors and he showed me how this thing works.’ She motioned to the now-quiet box. ‘You can set the alarm to go off like a fire bell or to chirp or have a different sound for each zone.’
‘Where did you put the devices?’ Mary had seen a few, but there were more green buttons on the box than devices she’d seen. Had she missed some?
‘Let’s see if I can remember.’ Cassandra’s brow furrowed as she stared at the box. ‘There are six stations possible, but I think we only used five. The front door, of course, and the kitchen door. That’s the one Richard must have come in just now. One on the doors leading into the back staircase, another on Miss Emilie’s bedroom door and … I think we put the last one on the morning-room door. She loved that room and often sat outside on the little porch.’
‘Not one on the attic door?’
Cassandra hesitated. ‘I don’t think so. I asked Caleb about that, but he said she never went up there.’
Mary found herself wishing she’d gone up the stairs and looked at the attic door, but she only nodded. She’d glanced into the morning room before she and Millie had gone out front but hadn’t seen one and, by that time, she’d been looking for them. So, where was the sixth one? ‘Can they be moved around?’
‘Oh, yes. This operates on batteries, so you can put the devices wherever you want.’
‘Let me get this straight.’ Ellen looked from the monitor to Cassandra, then to her aunt. ‘You set the house up so you could spy on Miss Emilie?’
‘It wasn’t spying. We wanted to make sure she didn’t go outside in the middle of the night and get lost or hurt.’
There was a defensiveness in Cassandra’s voice that was tinged with a little guilt, at least Mary thought so. Leaving that old lady all alone in the house with no one to help her didn’t seem a good idea, devices or no devices. ‘What about locks on the doors?’
‘The only ones she hadn’t managed to unlock were the French doors in the dining room, and that’s because the lock at the top is hard to slide. There are dead bolts on both the front and back doors, but they were no challenge. I had Caleb put on chain locks but I think they only used the one in front. They needed to be able to get in the house if she needed help. The monitor alerted them more than once when she was at a door, or through it. She never got off the block before he found her and brought her back. Except that last night.’ She made a little choking sound.
Mary thought Cassandra was going to break into tears. She didn’t.
She gathered herself together and went on: ‘If only I hadn’t taken those blasted sleeping pills.’ She blinked rapidly, looked at Ellen and said in a brisk manner, ‘Are we finished here?’
‘As soon as I measure the bedroom and see the bathroom.’ Ellen took one last look at the monitor, gathered up her materials and headed out of the kitchen, back into the living room.
Mary and Cassandra followed. Millie was still looking for crumbs but followed when Mary called out to her.
‘Nice and sunny.’ Ellen stood in the doorway to what appeared to be the only bedroom. There was a window at the far end of the room, overlooking the back stairs and the grove of oaks; another was at the side, just beyond the main staircase with a good view of the Plym house and the driveway. The double bed and highboy dresser left plenty of room for the large quilting frame set up on two sawhorses. A quilt in progress was stretched out on it and a stack of quilt squares sat ready to be stitched in place on a low table beside it. Needles, thread, padding, scissors – all the equipment needed by someone making a work of art out of scraps of cloth was neatly arranged on it. Mary saw nothing else but the quilt.
‘Will you look at this! Every stitch done by hand … and the stitches! Just beautiful. Oh, it’s all birds. How lovely.’
The bag of fluffy filling looked hardly touched but it wouldn’t be needed until the back went on. Lorraine had several squares stitched together but there were a number still waiting their turn. It appeared she’d finished the individual squares and had only the construction of the quilt left to do. Lorraine would use every bit of the padding in that package and, Mary was sure, a lot more before she finished. She touched the perfection of the stiches: so even, so carefully spaced, maybe she should try … what was she thinking! She had more to do than she had hours in the day as it was. She’d admire Lorraine’s. There was another quilt pinned to a pants hanger hanging on the back of the closet door. It was folded over so only part of the pattern was visible. It looked as if it had a different wildflower on each square. The lining around the main body of the quilt was smooth and even, and the corners were square and precise. Truly the work of a master craftswoman. If Lorraine had made the quilt on Richard’s bed, she’d come a long way.
‘We’re done. If you’re finished looking at the quilts, let’s get out of here.’
Mary turned quickly, gathered up Millie’s leash and, with one backward look at the quilts, followed Cassandra and Ellen down the stairs.