CHAPTER FOUR

 

Matt gave me a ride home, where I immediately settled down to draft a proposed contract for my work on Miriam's estate and send it to Gil. Then I stayed up late to work on the report on the Bergman sisters' collection, finishing it the next morning, considerably ahead of schedule.

In the end, it had been an easy decision. I'd recommended acquiring three quilts that had historical value, including a lovely Tumbling Blocks quilt made by the sisters' great grandmother around the turn of the twentieth century. She'd been a friend of Maria Dolores, the first lighthouse keeper of Danger Cove. The museum had Maria's diary in its archives, and I had found a reference to her helping the Bergman sisters' ancestor with layering the Tumbling Blocks quilt top with its batting and backing. Between the beauty of the quilt and the connection to town history, it would be an excellent addition to the museum's collection. It was too fragile for permanent display, but it could be rotated in and out of the room that was dedicated to the lighthouse's history.

After emailing the report on the Bergman sisters' quilts to Gil, I checked my inbox, where the signed copy of the contract for inventorying Miriam's collection was already waiting for me. I felt the same sort of anticipation that I used to experience when a client came in with a new and challenging legal case to work on.

I printed out the contract for my records and was about to call the estate's attorney to arrange for access to the property when the doorbell rang. More often than not, it just meant one of the bank's prior customers didn't realize the branch had been closed and hadn't noticed the prominent sign I'd posted, redirecting them to the new location. Still, I went out to what used to be the ATM lobby and now served as a space for meeting with my clients and appraising their quilts.

A young man—either late teens or early twenties—in khaki pants and an ill-fitting navy blazer stood outside. His blond good looks and muscular build reminded me of the local prosecutor, Frank Wolfe, or at least what I imagined he'd looked like about ten years ago when he'd been the quarterback on the local high school team. No, I thought; this kid didn't play football, at least not in the quarterback position. He was already more solid than Wolfe, despite not having reached his full potential. Wrestling team perhaps.

Whatever his sport of choice, he was probably selling something to raise funds for his team. I wasn't heartless, but living in the very center of town in what was often mistaken for a commercial building meant that even more Girl Scout Cookie sellers and other similar fundraisers came to my door than people who were trying to visit their safe deposit box. I pointed at the No Soliciting sign beneath the one that advised customers that their bank had moved.

He held up a Tyvek envelope addressed to me. The upper left corner was printed with Aaron Pohoke, Esquire, in a fancy cursive font like lawyers in the days of Charles Dickens' Bleak House might have used.

I unlocked the door and let the young man into the converted ATM lobby.

"Are you Keely Fairchild?"

I nodded.

"I'm Craig Pitts, and I work for Attorney Pohoke." He handed over the envelope. "He said to give this to you. It's a copy of a will and keys to the dead lady's house."

"You mean Miriam Stafford's?"

"Whatever." Craig was looking around the unadorned lobby with its long, narrow table and three wood chairs. "I heard you were a big shot lawyer in the city. Won a bunch of multi-million-dollar tort cases. That's what I want to do too."

"I don't know about big shot, but I was good at my job." I tugged on the too-well-sealed flap of the envelope. "And I was lucky enough to attract some clients with the potential for high awards."

"So why'd you quit?" Craig took the envelope back from me and opened it with as little obvious effort as if it hadn't been sealed at all before returning it to me. "And why move to Danger Cove of all places? I mean, it's not like there's much chance of getting a big case here. My boss does all right for himself, but he's been here forever, so everyone knows him, and there isn't much competition. But he only does maybe two or three personal injury trials a year, and none of them is all that big a deal."

"They're big deals to the clients." Keeping that fact front and center had likely had at lot to do with my past success, but had also added to the emotional burdens from my work. "Practicing law can be extremely stressful. It was time for me to find a little peace and quiet."

He snorted. "Yeah, Danger Cove's got that all right. Don't you ever miss the excitement?"

"Not really," I said, somewhat surprised at the thought. Retiring from the practice of law might not have been my choice, and there were moments when I wished I could help when someone needed the type of legal assistance I was good at, but overall I was content with my new career.

"Well, if you ever change your mind and go back to Seattle," Craig said, "I'd love to work with you. I'll be going to college there next year, so maybe I could do some sort of internship."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said, "but it's not likely to happen."

"I could show you how useful I can be by going to the dead lady's house with you, if you want," he said. "Aaron told me he didn't need me for anything else today if you wanted some help or just someone else to be there with you. I mean, it's got to be a little creepy to be in a strange house where the owner died recently."

"I appreciate the offer, but that won't be necessary. I won't be doing any heavy lifting, and I don't believe in ghosts."

"It still might be unsafe to be there alone. I mean, what if the killer comes back?"

It struck me then that I didn't know exactly how Miriam had died. Not that it really mattered. I wasn't afraid to be there alone, but I was curious. If Gil okayed Matt's joining me at Miriam's house, he might know more details about the murder. As he kept reminding me, he was a reporter after all.

"Despite what happened to Miriam," I said, "it's usually a nice, safe little neighborhood. I'll be fine on my own."

After a pause that suggested Craig was going to consider pleading his case some more, he said, "Okay," proving he had better instincts than some attorneys I'd seen in court who hadn't known when it was best to retreat and regroup. He dug in the chest pocket of his blazer for a sadly dog-eared stack of business cards with Aaron Pohoke's name and contact information printed in the same archaic script used on the envelope. Craig handed me one that had his own name and a cell phone number handwritten on the back. "If you change your mind, you can call or text me. Any time at all."

"Aren't you in school?"

He shook his head. "I graduated a semester early, and instead of starting college in January, I decided to wait until fall so I can earn some money for my school expenses. I didn't realize until too late that wrestling wasn't the best sport for getting a decent scholarship. I've got some savings from landscaping jobs in the summers, but nowhere near enough for an undergraduate degree, let alone both that and a law degree. The demand for outdoor work has been delayed by the late spring, so for now I'm just working part-time for Mr. Pohoke."

That kind of work ethic would help him in his legal career, assuming he didn't get disillusioned by the realities of a legal career in the course of his current job. "I'll keep you in mind if I do need any help with Miriam's estate. I don't really expect to though, and you'd probably be bored to death. Appraisal work is nowhere near as interesting and exciting to an outsider as legal work is."

That was why I'd chosen the new career, after all. Some of the repetitive work at Miriam's was going to be monotonous even for me, but at least there wasn't much risk that I'd pass out.

 

*   *   *

 

Craig Pitts left, and I dead-bolted the outer door before returning to the inner sanctum of my home. What had once been the main lobby and teller space was now my living room and kitchen.

I emptied the contents of the envelope onto the peninsula that divided the two areas and also served as the dining table. Inside was, indeed, a copy of Miriam Stafford's will and a pair of shiny new keys. There was a sticky note attached to the will: "Read this. Your client's interest extends to the entire contents of house. Changed locks this a.m. Entrusting the keys to you as an officer of the court." The signature was illegible—lawyers had somehow escaped their well-deserved reputation for bad handwriting, possibly because there were so many other reasons to tell jokes about us—although the name did seem to start with a capital A and there was a tall squiggle in the middle that could have been a capital P.

I sat on one of the peninsula's stools to read the will. Most of the text consisted of the necessary but unremarkable boilerplate language. The only exception was one brief paragraph that set out the exact distribution of Miriam's assets. She'd given "the entire contents of the house" to the Danger Cove Historical Museum, with the remainder of the estate to her cousin, Herb Stafford.

I was pleased to see that there were no conditions on the bequest to the museum that would prevent the quilts from being sold. The museum didn't really have the resources to care for a hundred-plus quilts that had no historical value and not enough aesthetic value to justify the cost of storing them. As long as the quilts didn't have to be retained by the museum, they could be bought by people who would use and appreciate them, and the proceeds could be added to the museum's general fund.

With the report on the Bergman sisters' quilts done ahead of the deadline, my schedule was clear for the next few days. Except of course for the impossible task of saving the quilt guild from eviction, but I couldn't do anything about that until my appointment with Jack Condor later today.

I considered doing some work in the vault in preparation for showing it to Matt. I could perhaps move some of the more revealing contents into storage until after he'd seen the space, and then I wouldn't have to worry as much about his reaction. I even started reviewing what I felt comfortable with him seeing and what I didn't, but I kept getting distracted by thoughts of Miriam's quilt collection.

It didn't take long before I gave in to the siren call of more than a hundred quilts waiting for me to study them. Preparing for Matt's visit to the vault could wait a little longer.

I sent Gil Torres a text, letting her know that I'd be working on the inventory until about 3:00 today, and that Matt had asked if he could observe. I didn't get an immediate response, so I packed my quilted messenger bag and headed out solo.

Half an hour later, I was heading up the driveway of Miriam's house, the strap of my bag digging into my shoulder with the combined weight of a digital camera that took better pictures than my phone, a laptop, and Barbara Brackman's hardcover reference book, Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a woman trotting out from the back door of the house to my right, the one with the For Sale sign in the front yard. She was tiny, barely five feet tall, and small-boned with a sharp, elfin face. She wore an ankle-length muumuu large enough to cover three people her size. It was made out of a lovely purple batik that would have been a nearly irresistible temptation to any quilter with scissors in her hands. As if prepared for such an attack, the woman was carrying a box large enough to serve as a shield against anyone trying to snip patches from her dress.

She stopped at the barrier of the white picket fence that separated the two properties.

"Excuse me." Her voice was high-pitched and squeaky. "Are you from the lawyer's office?"

"Sort of." I went over to see what she wanted. Up close, I could tell she was older than I'd thought originally, probably in her mid-fifties instead of mid-thirties. "I'm Keely Fairchild. I've been hired to inventory Ms. Stafford's quilts."

"Oh, good." She shoved the box in my direction, and I caught it automatically. It was heavier than it looked. Or perhaps it only seemed that way, since I was already burdened with everything in my messenger bag.

She explained, "This came for Miriam a few days ago. The mail carrier knows not to leave any packages out on the front porch, but the other delivery services don't know she died. I was afraid some creep would steal it, so I've been holding it for her. For her heirs, I mean."

"I can take it inside the house."

"What should I do if more packages are delivered?"

"That's a bit outside my job description," I said. "I'll ask the attorney to get in touch with you, though."

"Good. I'm Dani Hudson, and the landline is listed under my husband's name, Lou Hudson. The attorney can call me any time. I'm usually at home."

"I'll let him know." I nodded at the For Sale sign. "It must be a lot of work, keeping a place ready to sell."

Dani glanced over her shoulder as if she'd forgotten the sign was there. "I've gotten used to it. We've had it on the market for a while."

"If the inside is as nice as the outside, I'm sure you'll get more interest now that spring weather is finally here." My arms were starting to ache. I couldn't imagine how someone as petite as Dani had been able to carry the box across the yard with what had seemed to be remarkable ease. "I'd better get to work now. Thanks for watching out for Ms. Stafford's package."

"One more question if you don't mind," Dani said. "Can you tell me what's going to happen to Miriam's estate? It's just that we were neighbors for something like thirty years, and it's probably been ten years since anyone on this street has sold a house. Some folks were already worried that whoever buys our house could change the character of the neighborhood, and now there will be someone new in Miriam's house too. What if her estate sells to someone like Jack Condor? They might tear it down and put up something terrible. That's what Condor does, I've heard."

"I really don't know what the estate's plans are," I said. "You should talk to Aaron Pohoke about it."

"Oh, I know him," Dani said, her face brightening. "He represented my father's estate years ago. You don't have to ask him to call me. I've still got his number, so I'll call him."

I hoped Aaron would be better at returning her call than he'd been with Matt's. And I really hoped I could make it to Miriam's front steps before my arms gave out and I dropped the box. "I'll let him know to expect your call."

"One more thing." Dani leaned over the fence, the excess swathes of purple batik catching on the pointed pickets. "Do the police know what happened to her? Or who did it? With my husband away on business, I've been a little nervous at night. I never used to feel that way, but it's different now. Plus, it makes it hard to convince prospective buyers of our house that it's a nice neighborhood. They might believe me more if I could assure them the killer was caught and the motive was something that had nothing to do with this street being dangerous."

"I just appraise quilts. I don't know anything about the investigation," I said. "You probably know more about what happened to Miriam than I do."

"The police thought so too, and they were very nice, but I could tell they were disappointed that I couldn't tell them anything useful. We do watch out for each other on this street, keeping an eye out for strangers and that sort of thing." She nodded at the increasingly heavy box in my arms. "Like making sure packages are safe. But I didn't see anything unusual in the days before her body was found. She must have been killed at night, when I was asleep. Or perhaps when I was out running errands. My husband didn't see anything either. He was away on a business trip. He hasn't been home since then, in fact. I haven't told him about Miriam yet. He's going to be really upset."

"He was close to Miriam?"

"Not particularly. She didn't spend much time with people. We invited her to the neighborhood events, like the July 4th barbeque, and to our holiday open houses, but she was never interested. She preferred to be in her sewing room, making her quilts." Dani wrapped her arms around her ribs, making it even more obvious that the muumuu was several orders of magnitude too big for her frame. "It's just that my husband really wants to sell the house and move to a bigger city. I don't really want to leave Danger Cove, but living so far from an international airport is a burden for him, considering all the travel he does."

It was becoming obvious that Dani was lonely and wanted a friend she could gossip the day away with. In other circumstances, I wouldn't mind chatting a little longer, but not today. Besides the fact that my arms were threatening to give out from the weight of the package, I was feeling a little anxious about my appointment later today with Jack Condor. I needed to soak up as much of the soothing energy of Miriam's quilt collection as possible before then so I didn't pass out in the middle of negotiating with the guild's landlord.