CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

The next morning, I walked more briskly than normal on the way to Miriam's, anxious to get the work finished, and when I reached her street, there was no sign of Craig's truck. I was a little early—another habit left over from my days as a trial lawyer—so I wasn't concerned. I slowed my pace to give him time to arrive. After everything that had happened, I wasn't foolish enough to go near the house without him.

Dani Hudson must have been watching for me, because as soon as I was within sight of her front windows, she came jogging into the yard, wearing yet another massively oversized muumuu, this one in a red and black batik. "Have you heard how Tony's doing? I called the hospital and his boss at the post office, but they won't tell me anything."

"His cousin told me he had some swelling in his brain, so they put him in a medical coma," I said, "but that was yesterday afternoon. I don't have any updates since then."

"Poor Tony. I wonder what he was doing when he was attacked. Normally, I'd have said he was helping someone, but it was too late to help Miriam." Dani nodded at Craig's truck coming down the street. "And you already had a bodyguard."

"I was hoping you might have seen something that would help the police find his attacker."

She shook her head. "I wouldn't have been able to see anything. From what I saw of the police search afterwards, it happened in the blind spot where I can't see the yard from my house. Besides, I wasn't home at the time. I was at our lawyer's office. It looks like we can finally get our title problem straightened out and sell the house now. My husband will be so relieved when I tell him."

"He's still out of town?"

"For a few more days," Dani said. "I'm waiting until he gets back before I share the news. I don't want to get his hopes up about selling the house until I'm absolutely sure it's going to happen. We've celebrated too many times already when we thought we had the problem resolved only to have the deal fall apart."

A month was a long time for a business trip, and I only had Dani's word for her husband's whereabouts. Another possible explanation was that he had killed Miriam and then left town where he'd have a head start on disappearing if anyone began to suspect him of the murder. I hoped Matt could figure out where Lou Hudson was. The neighbors definitely had a motive, since it looked like they would finally be able to sell their house now that Miriam was dead.

The only problem with that theory was that it conflicted with my belief that the assault on Tony was related to Miriam's death. I supposed it was possible that in the course of talking to the police, Tony had recalled something that might implicate the Hudsons, and that was why he'd been attacked. But if Lou had been out of town all this time, as Dani claimed, he couldn't have been the attacker yesterday. Could Dani have attacked Tony? She was small, but it didn't take that much strength or skill to bash someone on the head. On the other hand, she claimed to have been with her attorney when the attack happened. Whether or not it was true, it was a difficult alibi for the police to shake since the attorney couldn't ethically dispute her statement without a court order.

The slamming of Craig's truck door reminded me that I needed to get to work if I wanted to finish the inventory before anything else could go wrong.

"I've got to go," I said. "But I'll let you know if I have any news about Tony's condition."

"Thanks," Dani said. "I hope they catch whoever did it. I just wish I'd been here and had seen him leaving. Then I could have identified him for the police. As it is, all we've got is speculation. I've talked to all the neighbors, and most of them think it was that Dreiser person. They had words a few weeks ago, you know. But I hadn't seen him here since then, so I'm not sure he's guilty. It's easy to blame Dreiser though, since no one likes him. He's come nosing around the neighborhood a few times, trying to get people to sell him their homes."

"That's his job, nothing personal."

"Not the way he does it," Dani said. "Once he lied about some environmental contamination, and then when a housing bubble burst a few years ago, he told everyone their houses were going to be totally worthless in another six months, so he'd be doing them a favor by paying them half of the market value. He got nasty when people turned him down."

"Did he assault anyone?"

"No. Mostly Dreiser just riled up other people." She frowned thoughtfully. "Although he did throw things when he was angry. Anything he could get his hands on. Maybe that's what happened to Tony. Dreiser threw something in a fit of pique, and it just happened to hit Tony's head. And Dreiser could have killed Miriam too by throwing the quilts while he was having a tantrum. He might not even have realized they landed on top of her."

"You don't sound entirely convinced that Dreiser's guilty."

"I'm not. For one thing, I saw Miriam arguing with Dreiser the day Tony intervened, and I don't think she'd have let him in her house after that. He couldn't have thrown the quilts at her from the front porch. For another, even if she did let him inside, I don't think she'd have been relaxed enough to sit in her recliner. She didn't really use the living room the way most people did. She thought of it as a working room for her quilts, and she didn't like people messing with anything in there. She brought visitors into the kitchen to sit at the dining table. She only sat in her recliner when she was doing some hand stitching."

"So how did the killer catch her in the living room?"

"It had to have been someone she knew," Dani said. "She left the front door unlocked whenever she was expecting a visitor. Otherwise, she'd get breathless in the rush to answer the door."

"She wouldn't do that for relative strangers, I imagine."

"Oh, no," Dani said. "I can only think of a few people she trusted at all. She used to leave it open for me until recently, when our negotiations fell apart. She used to do it for her cousin too, but not in the last year or so. Not since she lost her patience with his frequent requests for loans. Mostly, the only person I know that she left it unlocked for was Wayne. That's why he's my number-one suspect in her death."

"No one else she might have left the door unlocked for?"

"No one who had any reason to hurt her," Dani said. "She hired a number of different contractors from time to time, but from what they told me, she paid in cash and never quibbled about a bill. She was the kind of customer small businesses only dream of."

"Did she have any work done shortly before she died?"

Dani tugged at the excess fabric of her dress while she thought and briefly looked down at her lawn, still somewhat patchy from the winter. "You know, I'd forgotten about it, but she'd just had a spring clean-up done on her yard. I always thought it was a little surprising that she took such good care of the property, since she hardly ever spent any time outside, but she did make sure the yard was well maintained and mowed regularly."

I looked over at Miriam's home, and the grass was a little shaggy from three weeks of being untouched, but it was much neater than it would have been without proper maintenance before she'd died.

I also noticed that Craig had gone over to the porch to wait for me, but instead of sitting there as relaxed as he'd been other times, he was pacing restlessly. He probably had better things to do on a Saturday than to babysit me. Unfortunately, I couldn't release him from his duties here. After yesterday, it really wasn't safe for me to be at Miriam's house alone. I was beginning to worry that it wasn't even safe for the tough-looking Craig. The sooner I finished the inventory, the better it would be for everyone.

 

*   *   *

 

Once Craig and I went inside Miriam's house, I made sure he didn't stray out of my line of sight. I might not be able to wrestle an attacker to the ground like he could, but I could watch his back, so he couldn't be taken by surprise as Tony presumably had been.

Craig packed up the quilts as I finished with them, but I didn't let him take them out to the car until I was done and I could watch over him. Before long, the quilts had been tucked into two boxes and tossed into the truck's bed.

At Aaron Pohoke's office, Craig and I each carried a box inside. I left mine beside the receptionist's unoccupied desk while Crag carried his into the storage room.

Aaron came out of his office to ask me, "Do you have a minute?"

I nodded. "I hope you don't expect me to have my final report yet."

"I know it will take some time," he said as we walked down the hallway. "I couldn't look at it for a few days anyway. There's something else I need your help with. I've scheduled an appraiser to check for anything of value among Miriam's personal property, but you'd know more than he would about her quilting supplies. Do you have any idea of what they're worth?"

"There's a lot of fabric, including some full bolts, some of it designer prints that are pricey, but I wasn't paying much attention to anything except the quilts." After everything that had happened, I wasn't anxious to return to Miriam's home, but if I was going to do it, I'd just as soon get it over with quickly. "If you want, I could do a rough calculation of the value for the fabric and the more expensive supplies like batting. It would only take an hour or two. I'd need to take Craig with me, though."

"Craig left for lunch, but I can have him meet you there around 1:00 if that's okay with you."

"Perfect," I said. "I'll give you the report on the supplies when I submit the quilt inventory."

"The sooner, the better," Aaron said. "I need to get the house emptied, so we can put it on the market before the peak selling season is over."

I was anxious to finish the work too. Not just because I had other time-sensitive things to do, like finding new meeting space for the guild, but also because it felt like there was a dark cloud over Miriam's house. I wanted to be done and gone—and Craig safely away too—before anything else bad could happen there.

 

*   *   *

 

This time, Craig's truck was already in the driveway and he was leaning against it while he waited for me, finishing a bag of potato chips. He scrunched up the bag, tossed it into his truck's cab, and wiped his hands on his jeans. Fortunately, we'd both be wearing gloves while we went through the supplies, so I didn't need to worry about his getting grease on Miriam's fabric collection.

I unlocked the front door and headed straight for the sewing room, making a mental note to include the three rolls of batting in the living room, plus the quilting machine and table to my calculations. The machine was a well-respected brand, probably worth more than Miriam's car, even if Wayne Good hadn't sold her a lemon.

Craig followed with a stack of flat packing boxes. "Aaron wants me to box up whatever supplies you think are valuable."

"Depends on what your definition of 'valuable' is," I said. "The individual cuts of fabric on the shelves aren't worth much individually, but all together, they'd add up to thousands of dollars."

Craig's eyes widened. "Seriously?"

"Seriously." I could tell at a glance that the fabrics, neatly sorted by color, ranged all the way from basic and inexpensive to designer and pricey. I didn't have the time to check all the selvages for the manufacturers' labels, so the best I could do was estimate how much fabric was stacked in a single cubbyhole, and then multiply that times an average price and then times the total number of cubbies.

"Why don't you start packing the full bolts of fabric leaning against the wall?" I said, handing him a pair of disposable gloves to protect the material. "And count them for me, if you don't mind."

While I did my own calculations, Craig pulled on the gloves and began filling a large box with the bolts. He interrupted to say, "I'm going to take this one out to the truck."

"I'd be more comfortable if you'd just put them near the front door like before until I can watch your back while you're outside," I said. "I don't want someone sneaking up behind you, like what happened to Tony."

"I'm not afraid."

"Still," I said, "a good lawyer relies more on planning and precautions than on brute force. You might as well start in on those habits now."

"Okay." Craig left with the filled box, and I returned to my calculations.

When I had a total for the fabric, I turned to review the smaller supplies. There were hundreds of spools of thread, plus top-quality scissors, and several rotary cutters and rulers, but they weren't enough, either individually or as a collection, to spend my time on.

The only other items in the room that might have any significant value were the packaged rolls of batting that supplemented the bulk rolls out in the living room. They were all individually wrapped in plastic, so I wouldn't need my gloves any longer. I pulled them off and started to dig the packaged batts out from where they'd been piled underneath the worktable. The first dozen or so seemed to be specialty fibers, like wool and silk, and there were dozens of them. I didn't know exactly what they were worth, but they would be easy enough to count and then later I could do some research on the average costs.

Craig returned from carrying the third—and last—box of full bolts of fabric out to the living room. "What next?"

I nodded at the individually wrapped batting rolls. "If you'll prepare a few boxes, I'll help you fill them with the batting. I've already got all the information I need to write up the report on everything else."

"Don't you have more important things to do than pack boxes?" Craig began assembling more boxes. "It seems like a waste of your time."

"I don't mind." I grabbed the tops of two packages of batting in each hand and stood them on end inside the first assembled box. "The sooner we finish here, the happier we'll all be."

"Not me," Craig. "I was hoping there'd be time for you to tell me more about what it's like practicing law in a big city."

I knelt to dig out some more of the packaged batts. "What did you want to know?"

"I don't know," Craig said without looking up from his box assembly. "Did you ever have a Supreme Court case?"

"Not my field of law." My voice echoed in the space beneath the worktable. I tugged at the batts that were wedged into the back corner.

"Well, what about a million-dollar jury verdict?"

I'd had a few of those, but mostly what I remembered was the exhaustion I'd felt at the culmination of years and years of the monotonous discovery work that made packing boxes seem exciting. As much to remind myself as explain to him, I said, "It can be exhilarating to win a big case."

"I thought so." Craig had finished filling the box I'd started. "Champagne and caviar and stuff."

More like caffeine and take-out and hours at the computer, wrapping up the post-judgment loose ends or dealing with all the crises that had cropped up in other cases while the trial took all my attention. "Definitely stuff," I said.

"I can't wait." Craig folded down the tops of the full box. "I'm going to stop off at the bathroom after I put this box next to the front door. The door sticks in there, so if I'm not back within a few minutes, it's just because the door has stuck again, and it's taking me a while to free myself. Don't start thinking I've been knocked unconscious like the mailman."

I waved him off and grabbed what I thought were the last two batts, only to notice that there were another two behind them. Either Miriam had forgotten they were there, or she'd decided they didn't meet her quality standards. The other batts had been relatively dust-free, as if they'd been used and replaced regularly. These last two were covered with enough dust to suggest they'd been there for ten years without ever being touched. If I'd still been wearing my white cotton gloves, they'd have gotten filthy. According to the labels on the wrappers, the last two batts were generic polyester in a small size, making them inexpensive, and therefore easy for Miriam to have overlooked.

I reached for the little batts, only to find that they were heavier than the two much larger black cotton batts I'd pulled out before them. That didn't make any sense. Polyester fibers were considerably lighter than the denser cotton ones.

I rose to my feet and placed the two little batts on the worktable to inspect them. Just like all the others, these batts were rolled into cylinders and covered with a plastic bag, like a loaf of bread, complete with the same sort of plastic clip holding one end closed. I undid the clip on one and slid out the batt. After so much time rolled up, I expected the fibers to cling to each other, resisting any attempts to spread out the batt, but I didn't even have to give it the slightest push before it unrolled, revealing stacks of cash stuffed between the layers. Stacks that were about half as thick as the ones we'd found in the vault behind the framed Robbing Peter to Pay Paul quilt, but equal in number.

Apparently Miriam's financial training had never entirely left her, and she'd made sure to diversify, if not her all-cash portfolio, at least the places where she kept her assets. She must have thought that even if someone found and emptied out her vault, they'd never think to look inside her craft supplies. She'd been right too, judging by the way her living room and bedroom had been trashed, while no one had touched the sewing room.

I bundled up the batting again, leaving it and the other equally heavy package on the table, separate from the normal batts.

I was considering what to do about packing up the fabrics from the shelves when Craig returned. Compared to the cash hidden in the batting packages, the value of the fabrics was trivial, I decided. They could be left behind without much risk that they'd be stolen.

"I think we've done enough for now." I picked up the two cash-enhanced batts. "I have some other things to do, and you can pack up the fabric from the shelves another time. Everything else can stay here for now, since there's nothing left that's likely to attract any thieves."

Craig held out his hand to take the two batts from me to carry out to the truck, but I shook my head. "I've got these."

Craig shrugged and preceded me out into the hallway. "Is there something special about them?"

"You could say that." I tossed the strap of my messenger bag over my shoulder and followed Craig out to the front door, which he propped open with one of the boxes he'd left there. I stepped out onto the porch, so I could drop the batts onto the ground near the bottom step where they'd be in clear sight while we moved the rest of Miriam's supplies out to the truck. It wouldn't take long, since Craig had backed into the driveway, so the tailgate was only about twenty feet from the porch. "They're filled with bundles of cash."

He straightened from where he'd been wrestling a box onto the porch and turned to look at me. "Seriously?"

"As serious as if I were making an opening argument," I said.

He shook his head. "I should have thought of that. Of course, you're the experienced lawyer, and I've still got a lot to learn."

Craig's eyes narrowed suddenly, focusing beyond me.

I spun to see Herb Stafford coming up the driveway with a video camera held in front of his face, pointing it at me as aggressively as if it were a weapon.