CHAPTER SIX

 

Officer Faria was trotting around the room, confiscating all of Sunny's yellow-handled scissors from the various workstations, understandably uncomfortable being surrounded by all those sharp instruments in the aftermath of a stabbing. He was missing the real threat though. Apparently he hadn't figured out yet that the rotary cutters were like pizza cutters on steroids, with what amounted to circular razor blades in them, or he'd have collected them first.

Still, I was grateful that Faria's work took him away from Officer Fred Fields, so I could quiz him on what was going on outside without having to deal with Faria's condescension.

I knew Fred from the stress support group we both attended at the county hospital. He was about average height, and his uniform seemed to be a little bit tighter around the middle every time I saw him, since his favorite coping tool for stress was to indulge in sugary treats. Fred was in his mid-thirties, a seasoned officer, with no particular aspirations to rise through the ranks. He liked being on patrol where he felt like he was making a difference, stopping to chat with the local citizens. He took crimes personally, as if he alone were to blame for not having anticipated and prevented them, which led to his need for the stress support group meetings.

"I heard there were refreshments," he said. "Where are they?"

"Gone, I'm afraid." Seeing the look of disappointment on his face, I added, "You didn't miss much. Most of the treats had chocolate in them." That was about the only sugary food I'd ever seen him refuse, and if he was desperate enough, he'd eat a chocolate chip cookie and spit out the chips as if they were watermelon seeds.

He sighed. "I was hoping there might be some oatmeal-raisin cookies. Oatmeal's good for me. My wife's always making it for me."

Not in the form of cookies, I suspected, but all I said was, "How long do you think we'll be stuck here?"

"It could be a while," he said. "I'm under orders to make sure no one leaves until everyone's contact information has been collected, along with anything they might know about the incident. I'm going to need to take your phone, by the way. I've already collected everyone else's. No calls until you've given your statement. Unless you want to call a lawyer, of course, and then I'll make the arrangements."

I dug the phone out of my pocket and stared at it, reluctant to hand it over. It had taken me a long time to accept that I needed to have that kind of lifeline within reach at all times for medical reasons, but now that I had accepted this new reality, I found it nerve wracking to let go of the phone. Still, I didn't really need it as long as I was here at the museum, surrounded by cops who could summon help if I needed it.

I handed Fred the phone, and he dropped it into a plastic baggie. He wrote my name on the outside and then tucked it into the pocket of his uniform jacket. "I'll add it to the rest of the collection when I get a chance."

"Any idea what happened to Alan Miller?"

Fred narrowed his eyes, and his stiff posture radiated disapproval that a crime had taken place in his town. "All I know is that a young guy is dead. What a waste."

"I heard he had a record," I said. "Or not exactly a record, but he was 'well known to police.' Did you know him?"

"He wasn't that bad," he said. "Stupid stuff, nothing malicious. Just didn't think before he acted or spoke."

"I met him briefly this morning, and I was wondering if he might have been high on something."

"It's possible," Fred said. "And drugs can certainly make people do stupid things, ruin their lives before they get a chance to do anything."

"Or end their lives." It just seemed so wrong that a young man had been killed while trying to do something nice for his grandmother.

Fred nodded and stared desperately at the empty cookie plates, as if he might have overlooked something there that would help him cope with his distress.

My stomach grumbled, unmoved by the tragedy. "I know none of us can make any phone calls, but do you think you could call in a take-out lunch order for us? I'm starved, and I bet other people are too. Most of the people in the room have been here since before I arrived, and they've been working nonstop. We could get something for Carl's dog too, if he says it's okay."

"I think that could be arranged. If Ohlsen doesn't want anyone coming over here to deliver, I'll find someone to run across the street to the teriyaki place. You'll have to put together the order and arrange for payment though. Faria will rat me out if I get too involved. Not proper procedure, he'll say. Like he's got so much experience. I may not be as formally educated as he is, but I do know that hungry witnesses are not cooperative witnesses."

"Just give me a few minutes to find out what everyone wants." I was more than happy to pay for the lunch and collect everyone's order. I'd been planning a donation to the museum this month anyway, and keeping the volunteers fed would benefit everyone. Besides, collecting the orders would give me an excuse to do a little digging and find out what, if anything, the quilters knew about Alan Miller. It wasn't that I didn't trust the detective in charge—it was just that I'd never been good at delegating really important tasks, the ones that needed to be done perfectly. "I'll even pick up the tab. My way of thanking all the volunteers for coming today."

"You make my job so much easier," Fred said. "I wish you were at all my crime scenes."

I glanced at the door, where Richie Faria was frowning at us disapprovingly. "I'm afraid your colleagues aren't so happy that I'm here."

 

*   *   *

 

While Fred continued to mope over the sad remnants of the refreshment table, and Faria engaged in a conversation with Matt over by the entrance to the boardroom, I headed over to where I'd left my messenger bag beneath the appraisal desk, so I could get something to write the lunch orders on.

Most of the quilters were huddled around Dee and Emma. As I approached with my paper and pencil, Emma gave me a guilty look and Dee made a shooing motion at her troops. "Go on now. You all know what to do."

I could have asked everyone to stay, since it would have been easier and faster to get everyone's orders before they broke up, but I thought I'd get more information from them if I could speak to them individually. I remained silent while the quilters wandered off, forming small groups at various workstations.

"We're ordering takeout from the Teriyaki House," I told Dee and Emma. "What would you two like?"

"Just tell them we want our usual," Dee said. "Whoever answers the phone will know what it is."

That was something I still hadn't gotten used to about living in a small town. I wasn't anywhere near as well known as Dee, who'd lived here in Danger Cove her entire life, but many of the local business owners recognized me whenever I stopped in and were able to steer me toward exactly what I wanted before I even knew what I was looking for.

I made a note for Dee's and Emma's order and then asked, "So, what mischief were you setting the quilters off to do?"

"Mischief?" Dee's eyebrows rose. "Me?"

"Yes, you," I said. "I'll tell you the same thing that Detective Ohlsen told me: let the police do their jobs."

Dee laughed. "Yeah, like you're not already meddling yourself."

"I'm not meddling," I insisted. "Just making sure the right questions are being asked and no one's jumping to any conclusions."

"That's all we're doing too," Emma said earnestly. "I promise."

I glanced at the other quilters scattered throughout the room, and they didn't seem to be doing anything suspicious. "What questions do you think need to be asked?"

"We think that poor young man was killed because of the Tree of Life quilt he brought in," Dee said, meaning that it was what she thought, and Emma, always supportive unless her friend's safety was at issue, was going along with the idea. "The police won't think that's a valid motive. Can you convince them to look into it?"

"You'll have to convince me first. Why would someone kill him because of a quilt that belonged to his grandmother and didn't have any real financial value?"

Dee sighed. "I was hoping you'd have an idea. I just know the murder must have had something to do with the quilt. Alan's been in trouble before, but never anything big. So how come, when he's doing something entirely law abiding and ordinary, he gets himself killed?"

In Dee's mind, everything was related to quilts. Still, she could be right about Alan's death, and it was definitely a line of inquiry Detective Ohlsen, even with the best of intentions, would never consider. He'd certainly been skeptical about the possibility that Randall Tremain had been killed over a quilt that had a substantial price tag. Alan's grandmother's quilt didn't have that kind of value and would therefore be discounted as a possible motive.

"I'll mention your theory to the detective," I said, "but only if you promise not to do anything about the investigation without checking with me first."

Dee said, "But—"

Emma interrupted, placing a hand on her friend's shoulder for emphasis. "We promise."

I left them to return to their work—not even a murder investigation could come between them and their quilting—and checked in with each of the other workstations to collect lunch orders. A few of the quilters were actually working—cutting, stitching, or ironing the little ornaments—but most were just trading small talk and looking a little dazed by what had happened on the museum's grounds.

Carl Quincy had resumed his stitching at the table closest to the entrance, with his dog at his feet. He stopped working just long enough to place his order and let me know that his dog wouldn't be ready for a meal until later, by which time we both hoped the police would have released everyone to go home.

Trudy was acting as Carl's gopher, taking his finished pieces over to an ironing board and then to wherever they needed to go afterward. She took a moment to consider what she wanted for lunch, but as soon as I'd written it down and asked her if she'd known Alan, she tensed and looked anxiously at the growing chain of pieces that Carl was producing. She produced a seam ripper from the back pocket of her pants and used it to disconnect the chain from the fabric under the presser foot. "I've got to get these over to the ironing station." She glanced around, as if afraid that Jayne Connors was lurking nearby, preparing to pounce on anyone who wasn't keeping up with her assignments.

Trudy had been through enough today, so I didn't insist on an answer, even though I knew that Jayne wasn't in the room. While I'd been chatting with Dee and Emma, Jayne and Meg McLaughlin had stepped out into the hallway together for a private conversation under Richie Faria's close observation. Trudy reached the safety of the nearest ironing station before Jayne and Meg came back inside the boardroom. Jayne's face was red and blotchy, like she'd been crying or at least was furiously embarrassed. Meg wasn't wearing her Santa hat and the red pinafore-style apron any longer, presumably because they were too frivolous for the current somber mood in the room.

I nodded a greeting to Jayne and introduced myself to Meg.

"I've heard so much about you," the quilt instructor said. "Dee and Emma just adore you. They think you're going to be more famous than I am among quilters someday."

"They do have a tendency to get carried away with their enthusiasm," I said. "I doubt an appraiser will ever be more interesting than an artist. They've been very complimentary about you too. I hope I'll get a chance to see some of your work at a show sometime."

"I'd be glad to give you a private showing at my home studio sometime." Meg turned to her assistant. "Maybe Jayne would join us and bring some of her quilts to my house. Then you could see some really extraordinary quilts."

Jayne's face turned redder, but this time it was for happier reasons. When she spoke, she sounded subdued, but nothing seemed to extinguish the shrill tones of her voice. "I wouldn't have finished even one quilt if it weren't for Meg's advice and encouragement."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Fred becoming restless. He was going to start licking the sugar off the plates soon if he didn't find some better way to keep his nerves under control. I needed to wrap up my conversation with the last of the quilters and get back to him. I explained to Meg and Jayne about the lunch order I was compiling, donated by someone who preferred to remain anonymous.

Jayne perked up. "They do the most amazing pot stickers. I'll take whatever their lunch special is today, plus a side order of pot stickers."

"I'm not really hungry," Meg said. "I ate a few too many of the Christmas cookies. Perhaps just a salad for me."

"And a side order of pot stickers," Jayne said. "You don't know what you'd be missing if you didn't get them. You moved to Seattle before the Teriyaki House opened. I'll eat them if you decide you don't want them."

Meg nodded her assent. "Please thank the donor for lunch. I just wish it wasn't in such tragic circumstances, so we could enjoy it more."

"I'm sure the donor agrees." I glanced at Fred again, and while he was growing impatient, I thought I had at least another a minute or two before he decided he needed to make an emergency run to the Cinnamon Sugar Bakery. It was a miracle he wasn't diabetic like Carl Quincy.

After talking to all of the other quilters, I had nothing useful for the murder investigation. No one had known Alan Miller well or even particularly noticed his arrival or departure. One of the quilters vaguely recalled selling him the ticket for the appraisal, but only because he was young and male, the only person of that description she'd seen since arriving at the museum this morning. Everyone else had been too busy with their assigned ornament-making tasks to pay attention to anyone else's comings and goings. Meg and Jayne were my last hope for information.

"I don't suppose either of you knew the victim personally."

Meg shook her head. "I used to know everyone in Danger Cove, or at least all of the adults. Alan was too young for me to have known him. He'd have still been a kid when I moved to Seattle."

"I heard he was a drug dealer," Jayne said, her shrill tone sharpening even further with her disdain. "I would never have anything to do with someone like that."

"Even so, you might have noticed what he was up to this morning, since he was memorable as the only young male in the room." Meg and Jayne had been outside the boardroom at various times after Alan left to wait for his ride. I thought one of them might have noticed if Alan had been waiting at the bottom of the stairs, staying in the relative warmth of the hallway, and the person coming to give Alan a ride had come inside to meet him. I didn't want to put any ideas into their heads with a leading question though, so I just asked, "When you were out in the hall, or maybe during a trip to the bathroom, did you see anything unusual relating to Alan?"

The two women looked at each other for a moment, as if each expected the other to speak. Then they turned toward me, shaking their heads.

Meg answered for them. "We were too involved in our own conversation to pay attention to anything else, and when I need to go to the bathroom, there's no time for coherent thought. I don't even recall seeing him leave. I think the only time I noticed him at all was when he was at your appraisal desk, and I wondered what such a young man was doing here with a quilt. Not that men can't be excellent quilters, of course, like Carl Quincy. And Stefan Anderson knows more about quilt history than anyone else here does, except perhaps for you. It's just that it's not very common to see men in their early twenties interested in what used to be called the domestic arts."

I might have continued with my cross-examination, except I caught a glimpse of Fred running a finger through the dusting of sugar on a cookie plate. "I'd better go have this order called in so we don't all collapse from hunger before the food arrives. We wouldn't want to waste all those excellent pot stickers."

 

*   *   *

 

I added an assortment of lunch orders to my list, for Sunny and Stefan, who were still in Gil's office, and Matt, whom I didn't want to interrupt while he was talking to Richie Faria. I handed the paper, along with my credit card, to Fred, who went out into the hall to call in the order. He could still make sure no one left from out there, and he had Richie Faria as backup inside the boardroom, keeping an eye on all of us witnesses.

I was a little surprised that Faria actually let Meg McLaughlin leave for yet another trip to the ladies' room. I would have expected him to insist, on principle, that she needed an escort for the brief walk down the hall. Apparently even he could see there really wasn't anywhere for her to go, not with Fred out in the hall, a clear view of the door to the restrooms, and no way for anyone to escape from the windowless, second-floor space.

Faria cut off his conversation with Matt so he could stand at the entrance with the stoic, silent demeanor of a Buckingham Palace guard. I expected Matt to act like a tourist trying to get one of the Queen's Guard to laugh or otherwise react, but for once he didn't try to get a rise out of anyone. He accepted his dismissal and wandered over to the empty seat next to Carl Quincy at the first sewing machine table.

There wasn't much I could do until the food arrived, so I went over to see if Matt had learned anything from Faria. Matt was a reporter, after all, even if he insisted he was only interested in stories about the arts. Surely he was as curious as I was about what could possibly have led to Alan Miller's untimely death.

By the time I reached the front table, Matt was already surrounded by quilters, most of them a good fifteen to twenty years older than he was. A few of them took selfies with him while he bantered and kept everyone's mind off the uniformed officer at the door and the reason for his presence.

Matt definitely had a way with women. At the quilt show three months ago, I'd seen him graciously rebuff the matchmaking efforts of the quilters who'd wanted to introduce him to their daughters or granddaughters, and he'd pretended not to notice the other quilters who were infatuated with him.

I wasn't entirely sure what they all saw in him. It wasn't just that he was a novelty, as a male vastly outnumbered by women in the room. Carl Quincy hadn't attracted any groupies. Matt was more gregarious than Carl, although given the number of pictures being taken, the attraction seemed to be primarily based on Matt's appearance, not on his conversational skills.

I hadn't imagined it earlier today; Matt's looks really had improved during his absence. His hair was different than the last time I saw him. It had been cut and styled within the last two or three weeks, instead of being several months overdue for a trim. Of course, some things didn't change. Matt still favored the same brand of excessively-pocketed cargo pants and odd-colored sport shirts.

Matt politely encouraged the last selfie-taker to move along, and then he turned to me. I'd never really believed that anyone could express hunger for another person just through his eyes and facial expression, but he was definitely looking at me as if we were lovers reunited after a long separation. Of course, he probably used the same expression on all of his groupies. He'd probably learned to fake it while posing for the camera.

I'd never been a groupie, and I had no intention of starting now. I returned his gaze coolly.

It didn't seem to bother him. In fact, his smile widened even more. "Life is always an adventure when we're together."

I couldn't help the way my spirits lifted. He really was charming, and I was as susceptible to his blarney as all the other women in the room. And then I remembered the three months when he hadn't called.

"People die when we're together."

"I guess I've got my work cut out for me if you associate me with death." Matt gestured for me to sit next to him. "I like a challenge though."

I dropped into the empty chair while I considered how to respond to his flirting. I wasn't in the market for anything more than a friendship with him or anyone else these days anyway. Friends were good. Everyone needed them, and they'd been shown to reduce stress. Romantic relationships, on the other hand, generally caused a huge spike in stress levels, at least in their early stages. Oh, sure, they had their health benefits too, with all those endorphins and serotonin being released, but I needed to get my medical condition under better control before I even considered dating again. Otherwise, I'd be passing out left and right, which, in addition to scaring off potential lovers, also tended to cause bruises, concussions, and broken bones. No man, least of all an unreliable one, was worth that kind of pain.

I deliberately pretended to misunderstand Matt's last comment. "Would it be a big enough challenge if I asked you to help me make sure the police are on the right track today? I saw you talking to Richie Faria. Did he tell you anything about what's going on downstairs?"

Matt hesitated for the briefest moment before accepting the change of subject. "He wouldn't say anything. Apparently it's against the rules for responding officers to say anything substantive to reporters. All he can do is refer me to the lead detective."

"Seriously? And you let him get away with that?"

"Of course not. I didn't need him to say anything. His body language told me everything he knew. All I had to do was ask leading questions and watch his response. As best I can tell, their theory is that it's a case of a known troublemaker hanging around with the wrong people and reaping the consequences."

"That seems awfully simplistic. A one-size-fits-all theory of crime," I said. "Of course, Dee and Emma think Alan was killed because of the quilt, and that's just another flavor of one-size-fits-all solutions. Everything is about quilts for them."

"It's as good a theory as the official one," he said. "But you're right. I think it's more complicated than either one. What's your theory? I saw you talking to everyone, and it looked like you were asking more than, 'What do you want for lunch?'"

I glanced at Richie Faria, standing at attention beside the door. "Was I that obvious?"

"No," Matt said. "Faria wasn't paying you any attention. He thinks you're nothing but a clueless meddler, not worth watching. Just shows you what a fool he is. And I wasn't about to tell him what you were up to. You owe me for not blowing your cover, so tell me what you found out."

"Nothing, I'm afraid. No one saw anything, no one actually knew Alan except by reputation, and they're all in a bit of shock."

"I think someone in this room is in more shock than everyone else."

My voice rose in surprise. "You think one of the quilters did it?"

Carl Quincy stiffened at the far end of the table.

"It's just a theory," Matt said. "But think about where Alan was killed. I think he knew his killer and wasn't afraid to be alone with him—or her—in a secluded area where he'd essentially be trapped within a confined space."

"It wouldn't be the first time that someone underestimated a quilter."

"Exactly. He must have thought the killer was harmless. From what I've heard, Alan was a streetwise kid, so he'd have stayed out in the open if he thought the other person might want to attack him. It's not easy to stab a person if the victim has some warning and an open path to run away."

"What would you know about a stabbing?" I hadn't looked at the corpse closely enough to see any details other than Alan's unseeing eyes and a vague impression of blood. "You keep telling me you're nothing but a lowly arts reporter."

"People always assume reporters are interested in crimes, so I hear all sorts of stuff. But I really do prefer reporting on art." Matt looked down at the bed of the sewing machine for a moment. "Forget about my history. Let's just say I've seen a lot of things, most of them completely unrelated to being a reporter. Trust me when I say I know what a stabbing victim looks like."

"Okay, but why would a quilter stab Alan Miller?"

"That's your job to figure out," Matt said. "I was hoping you could fill in the motivation from what you'd learned."

"Sorry. All I got was lunch orders and a whole lot of 'I know nothing.'"

"Not your fault," Matt said. "No one does her best work on an empty stomach. We can both try again after we've eaten. Until then, I'm going to make some ornaments. What about you?"

"Nothing that involves a sewing machine. They can be as deadly as a knife."

"Never thought you'd be such a chicken." Matt grabbed a red square and a white square, but instead of stitching a seam close to one edge of the paired-up pieces as I'd seen Carl do, he stitched a diagonal line across the squares. "It's easy. See?"

I pointed at the white board. "Your work doesn't look anything like the diagrams or like any of the other pieces I've seen around the room."

"I prefer to make my own designs." He took another pair of squares and made another random, but admittedly straight, diagonal stitching line, and then repeated the process with two more pairs of squares. "Be right back."

He dashed off to an ironing board, did some quick pressing, then jogged over to a cutting table, did something I couldn't see, and then came back with his stitched pieces trimmed down to squares. They still didn't look anything like the diagram on the white board. Instead of being precisely split down the middle into two identical but different-colored triangles, his squares were divided along a diagonal line into two unequal sections, sometimes with more red and sometimes with more white.

Matt laid his pieced squares on the table, alternating them with some plain squares of fabric. He placed a red square in the middle and white ones in the four corners. I could see a vague resemblance to the diagram on the wall, but instead of forming a star with four identical triangular points, his star had four points that were all a slightly different size and shape from each other.

A few quilters wandered over, and one of them said something about Gwen Marston and Liberated Quiltmaking. I'd heard of the iconic book, but I hadn't personally viewed any quilts made in that spontaneous and intentionally imperfect style.

When Matt finished his little star, he handed it to me. It really did look quite nice, pulsing with more energy than the precisely pieced blocks. I doubted Meg and Jayne would approve, although when I turned it over, the seams did appear to be perfectly even at a scant quarter inch.

When I put the block down on the table, Matt searched his pockets until he found a pen with indelible ink. He signed a white corner square with Matteo, and handed it to one of the women who'd been admiring his handiwork. Admiring something about him anyway.

He asked her, "Would you get this ironed, and pass it along to whoever's layering the blocks for finishing?"

The woman took the block and carried it over to a nearby ironing board as carefully as if it were made of spun glass.