CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

The trick to recovering from unconsciousness, as I'd learned through too much practice, was to resist the urge to immediately jump to my feet.

My doctor insisted I was fortunate that my overloaded nervous system only caused me to take a brief nap. Some people reacted to stress with seizures, strokes, or heart attacks. I didn't feel fortunate though. I felt frustrated that I couldn't go after the intruder on the off chance he was still visible from the front window. I had to move slowly until I was certain my nervous system had settled down, or else I'd just pass out again.

I wiggled my toes and fingers, then feet, legs and arms. When they all appeared to be in working condition and there were no sharp pains that would indicate a sprain or broken bone, I got cautiously to my feet. I jogged out of the sewing room and down the hallway to where I could see out the front window, but there was no one in sight.

I returned to the kitchen to collect my phone and dial 9-1-1. I hesitated on the verge of dialing, aware that I couldn't be sure the intrusion had been anything other than a random break-in, something that needed to be reported, but didn't rise to the level of an emergency. I'd read quite a few news stories about homes being robbed during the owner's funeral. But Miriam's final services must have happened some time ago, and the house had been unoccupied for three weeks, so why would a burglar wait so long? And why would he—or she—disguise her voice, unless it was someone I could identify?

No, I'd met too many people interested in the inside of Miriam's house—from Herb Stafford and Wayne Good to Jack Condor and Frank Dreiser—to believe this break-in had been random.

Whatever they were all looking for, it might be related to Miriam's death, so the police needed to know about it. It also needed to be found and removed from the house for safekeeping.

Instead of dialing 9-1-1, I called Detective Ohlsen, who said he'd be right over with a forensics team. Then I called Aaron Pohoke, but his receptionist said he was in court. I left a message, asking him to call me back.

Clearly, it wasn't safe for me to be here until the police sorted everything out, and I couldn't take the quilts with me until they'd followed up on the break-in. The remainder of the inventory was going to have to wait.

I headed back to the sewing room to get my messenger bag. On the way, I passed the door to Miriam's bedroom, which was ajar. I knew better than to touch anything in case the intruder had left any evidence of his visit in there. I glanced inside, though. The curtains were still drawn back from when Alex Jordan had been in there this morning, providing enough light to see the contents of the room. It had been such a jumbled mess this morning, I couldn't tell exactly how much searching the intruder had done. One thing I did remember distinctly: at least two drawers had been dangling precariously from the dresser. Now they were lying on the floor.

The sound of a car backfiring startled me, reminding me that I needed to get out of there before anyone else came searching for whatever holy grail they thought was hidden in Miriam's home.

 

*   *   *

 

Bud Ohlsen arrived with wannabe-detective Officer Richie Faria in tow, along with two forensic technicians. Richie gave me a look that clearly meant Not you, again.

Ohlsen was more discreet and listened intently to my explanation of what had happened. There were quite a few long silences after I'd answered a question, and he mulled it over before asking me for additional details. I didn't take it personally; that was just how he worked, concentrating intently for long moments without any regard for social niceties. It was hard to read Ohlsen's expressions, but I thought he wasn't entirely convinced the intruder was related to the murder. His willingness to take me even a little seriously suggested he was desperate for leads in Miriam's death.

When I was done with my statement, Ohlsen confirmed that it hadn't been his people who'd tossed Miriam's bedroom. He also told me to stay away from Miriam's house for the rest of the day so his team could take a look at the tossed bedroom and check for new fingerprints on the doorknobs. I warned him that he'd probably find Alex Jordan's prints on the bedroom door, but that she'd been there for legitimate purposes.

With nothing more I could do on the inventory for the time being, I decided it was time to have a talk with Gil at the museum. In the lobby, the ticket-taker, Liz, set aside her e-reader just long enough to send me upstairs and call Gil to let her know I was on my way.

Gil was waiting for me in the door to her office suite. As she led me inside, she said, "You look tired. Did you pull an all-nighter to get the inventory done?" She sang a bit of "Rock Around the Clock," substituting "work" for "rock."

Her voice was so lovely I hated to cut her off with my bad news, so I waited for her to finish. When she did, she added, "I only have a minute to talk, because I was just about to head on over to the office of one of the board members. I think he might back me on hosting the quilt guild's meetings here, especially if I can give him some good news about Miriam's quilts."

"All I've got is bad news," I said. "The inventory is far from done, and I've run into a snag."

"I know this is a big project and you do have other clients," Gil said. "I'm sure you'll get it done as soon as your schedule allows."

"It's not my schedule that's the main problem." I'd thought about simply packing up all the quilts, but it would take too long. I'd still need to supervise their removal, and I'd never get both the transporting and the appraisals done before I had to stop to work on other commitments. That meant working on them solely at Miriam's house.

I explained about my safety concerns after today's experience with the intruder.

"I don't blame you for not wanting to go back there alone," Gil said. "What if I could get one of my security guards to go with you? I can see if any of them would like to work some extra hours."

I didn't know a polite way of saying that none of the museum's security guards looked sufficiently menacing to scare off an intruder. They were good at their job, but it mostly consisted of polite warnings to visitors who were naturally inclined to respect the museum's displays, or they wouldn't have been at the museum in the first place. It wasn't like the Danger Cove Historical Museum had a collection of Renaissance paintings or crown jewels that might attract dangerous criminals. Just having someone wandering the museum's halls was enough to deter any mischief here. I didn't think that would be enough for anyone who went to Miriam's house with the specific intent of committing mayhem.

"The museum shouldn't have to bear the cost of my safety at Miriam's house," I said. "That should be the estate's responsibility. I've got a call in to the attorney, and perhaps he can arrange something. In fact, he has an intern who might be able to be my escort. He's young, but he's a wrestler, and even from a distance, he looks strong. No one would want to tangle with him."

"Leave it to me," Gil said. "I'll talk to Mr. Pohoke about the break-in, and if he can't arrange for this intern to go with you, I'll find someone else."

"Thanks. I can go back tomorrow morning if there's someone available then."

"I'll make sure there is." Gil stood, preparing to leave for her meeting.

"As long as I've already ruined your day, I might as well warn you that the bequest to the museum may not be an unmitigated blessing. I've looked at enough of the quilts to know that there's something really odd about her sales. I still need to check her computer records, but if I'm right, she was selling her quilts for barely enough to cover her costs. The only way she could have been making enough of a profit for her to live on is if she was doing something illegal. You might not want the museum associated with whatever she was doing."

Gil sighed and dropped back into her chair. "Until I met you, I thought the quilting world was a lot less cutthroat than the museum world. What on earth could Miriam have been doing that was illegal?"

I shrugged. "Any number of things. The quilt sales could have been a front for something else. Or she could have been stealing the supplies to make her quilts. Or possibly some sort of fraud, selling the same quilt multiple times and telling the various buyers that it was lost in shipping or something."

Gil hummed a few bluesy notes. "It does seem like every time something good happens for the museum, there's an unsavory aspect to it too. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what your final report has to say. Then we can decide whether to decline the bequest. Unless you think I need to decide right away."

"I'm not a probate expert," I said, "but I believe you have at least a few months from the date of death to act. I'm still hoping there's some perfectly legal explanation for how Miriam could be making a living with her quilts."

"I definitely don't want the museum to be dealing in stolen goods, even if it's just indirectly."

"None of this makes sense," I said. "Aaron Pohoke told me that Miriam was a stickler for reporting her income religiously. Otherwise, I would have suspected her of tax fraud, rather than some other crime. It's possible that the list price was just for the IRS, and she was charging more than that somehow, but I'm not sure how she'd let her customers know what the real price is. Besides, it's not easy to avoid an evidence trail in an online setting, where it's not a cash business."

"One thing I learned in business school is that there's always a way around the law if you work hard enough at it. Some of the cheaters get caught, and the rest are either geniuses or lucky, benefitting from the fact that we don't live in a police state."

"I'm told that Miriam was quite bright, but it's hard to imagine her as some sort of criminal mastermind," I said. "And she definitely wasn't lucky. Not when she ended up getting smothered to death with her own quilts."

 

*   *   *

 

Shortly after I got home and kicked off my shoes, my phone pinged with a text from Gil. She'd arranged for Craig Pitts to meet me at Miriam's house at 10:00 the next morning, so I could resume my work there without worrying about intruders.

For the rest of the day, I used my enforced break from the inventory to review my notes, hoping to find something that I'd missed that would explain their too-low prices. I also went online to do some more research into the buyers and sellers of cheddar quilts. There were several blog posts, a Pinterest page, and even an online forum solely dedicated to this tiny niche. Miriam had been active at the forum, and it appeared that she had some dedicated followers among the pool of people who collected cheddar quilts. She'd been asked a few times about making quilts on commission, and she'd referred those people to the private message system, which I couldn't access without her password.

I wished I knew if she'd agreed to the commissions. If she had, it might explain a lot about her finances. The commissions might have been where her real income came from. Just like customers for tailor-made clothes, cheddar quilt collectors could have been willing to pay substantially more for custom work than for what amounted to off-the-rack quilts. If Miriam did accept commissions, then the other quilts she sold were comparable to samples in a portfolio rather than a product that would actually be sold.

I called Aaron Pohoke to see if he'd had any success in getting copies of Miriam's computer files, but he said it would be at least another week before all the red tape was unwound enough for him to have them. I also found out that Aaron hadn't known that Miriam had owned a car or that it was missing.

The next morning, I was tempted to head over to Miriam's house as soon as I'd finished breakfast, hoping to make up for lost time, but I forced myself to do some tidying of the vault's contents until I could be confident that Craig would be there before me. I'd almost reached the Hudsons' yard when the mail carrier, Tony Flores, joined me on the sidewalk, his huge mail bag even more stuffed than the last time I'd seen it.

"I heard about the intruder yesterday," he said, walking with me. "Are you sure it's safe to be in Miriam's house all alone?"

"I'll have someone watching my back." I pointed to where Craig Pitts was seated on the front porch, assembling a stack of cardboard flats into packing boxes. The old but pristinely maintained pickup parked in Miriam's driveway must have belonged to Craig.

Tony slapped his hand to the left side of his chest and made an exaggerated expression of despair. "Oh, no. I thought I was the only one for you."

"You are," I said. "I promise not to buy stamps from anyone but you."

"Well, that's a relief." He abandoned his pose of despair and dug into his overflowing mail pouch. "I've got a package for Miriam. I think she had some subscription services for her quilt supplies, and they probably haven't been notified yet that she passed. Do you know what the estate wants me to do with her mail?"

"I don't, but if you want to give me the package, I'll ask Craig to take it to his office. He works for the estate's attorney."

Tony reached into a side section of his bag and pulled out a packet printed with the post office's logo. "Give him this too, please. It's got everything the attorney needs to request that the mail be forwarded to his office."

I took it from him. "How did you know about the intruder, anyway?"

He shrugged. "I run into people on my route. I like to listen, and they like to talk, especially when something out of the ordinary has happened. Someone who lives nearby heard it from the spouse of a police officer, I think. She was worried that the neighborhood was becoming dangerous, what with all of the recent police involvement."

"Two incidents aren't a lot," I said. "Although I suppose when one of them is murder, it's worrisome."

"There's been more than two incidents, without even counting the ones that didn't get reported to the police," Tony said. "I can't recall all of them, but I do know her ex-boss, Frank Dreiser, made a big scene here a couple of months ago. I told Miriam she should get a restraining order against him, but she wouldn't. She said it had all been a misunderstanding, and she was certain he wouldn't be back."

"Frank Dreiser was at Miriam's house recently?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "At least twice that I know of. The first time I saw him here, he couldn't get her to answer the door. I checked on her after he left, and she told me who he was and that she didn't want anything to do with him. The second time, I'm not sure how he convinced her to open her door, but he managed it. They were shouting at each other, and I really thought he was going to push his way into her house, so I ran over to see if I could calm things down."

"Did you?"

"Eventually." Tony grinned, but it seemed forced for once. "No one—man, woman or child—can resist my charms."

"No one?" I asked skeptically.

"Okay, almost no one." He tugged his mail sack to one side, revealing a can of pepper spray affixed to his belt. "And the few exceptions fall into line when they see this." He leaned forward to whisper confidentially. "Good thing they don't know it's empty, huh?"

"Did you tell the police about Miriam's argument with her boss?"

"They didn't ask the day they found Miriam's body, and I was too upset at the time to think to mention it." Tony let his bag fall back into place, covering his pepper spray. "Do you think I should tell them now?"

"It might help," I said. "They don't have any leads, as far as I know. Detective Ohlsen is working on the case, if you want to ask for him."

"I will. Although it will have to wait until I'm done with my route." His briefly solemn tone changed back to his usual cheerfulness when he added, "After all, if snow, rain, heat, and gloom of night can't keep me from my appointed rounds, then neither can a murder investigation."

 

*   *   *

 

As I neared the porch, Craig asked, "What did the mail carrier want?"

I held out the package and the mail-forwarding packet. "To give me these. Would you mind taking them back to the law office with you?"

"Whatever you want," he said. "Aaron told me to consider you my boss until everything's packed up and secured."

"Packed up?"

"Yeah." Craig moved out of my way so I could come up the front steps. "Didn't he tell you? He wants me to pack up the quilts you're done with and put them in storage. And anything else you think is valuable. He's even paying me extra for the use of my truck."

"Where will he be storing the quilts? Textiles are more delicate than most people believe." If I hadn't already found another use for the bank vault in my home, I might have offered to store the quilts there. It would have been perfect: climate-controlled and completely protected from sunlight. As it was, I didn't have room for more than two or three quilts in there now, nowhere near the number in Miriam's collection. Besides, the way I used the space revealed a little too much about me personally, so I wasn't comfortable with the idea of inviting anyone other than close friends to see it.

Craig shrugged. "Aaron just told me to get the quilts to his office, and whatever he says, that's what I do. I just wish he had more work for me to do. The job's going to look great on my resume, and he pays a decent hourly rate, but it's only part-time. I'm still going to have to do my landscaping work this summer if I want to have enough money to start college in the fall. My Mom's worked hard to give me opportunities she never had, but she can't help much with my tuition."

I unlocked the door and propped it open so Craig could bring the boxes inside.

"Oh, wait," Craig said. "There was something else I was supposed to tell you. Aaron said that under no circumstances should you let Herb Stafford into Miriam's house. The guy has hired his own attorney and filed to contest the will. I bet he wouldn't do that if you were representing the estate."

I shook my head. "That was never my specialty, and even if it had been, it sounds like Herb's not being rational about his decision to sue, so it wouldn't matter who the attorney is. Even if he wins his case, the contents of Miriam's house are likely to be worth less than the cost of the lawsuit."

"I didn't tell you the best part," Craig said. "Herb didn't hire a local lawyer. It's someone from a big Seattle firm. Aaron didn't tell me the name, but it could be someone you know. I wonder if they're looking for any interns. Perhaps you could put in a good word for me."

He definitely had the persistence required of an effective attorney. "Maybe after I've observed more of your work."

"Thanks." He got to his feet and followed me inside.

I retrieved a pair of disposable latex gloves from my messenger bag and handed them to him. "You should wear these while you pack up the quilts. You can start with the ones in the living room since I've already inventoried them."

He pulled on the gloves, and I left him to the task while I went to the sewing room and picked up where I'd left off the previous day. A little while later, I got a text from Matt, saying he was at the front door, and my bouncer wouldn't let him into the club.