Dee was anxious to get back to the quilt show setup, so I turned down Lindsay's offer of a ride to the museum. Even so, I arrived before Matt did. I bought him an admission ticket and waited for him on the steps.
Matt looked at the ticket I held out to him. "What's that for?"
"I invited you here. The least I can do is pay for your ticket."
"So this is a date?" he said with a grin.
It had been a mistake to encourage him earlier. I kept my tone serious and emphatic. "Not a date. A business meeting. Deductible on my taxes even." I led him inside and then through the lobby to the otherwise unoccupied room dedicated to the Danger Cove lighthouse. "Have you found out anything about the politician Martha McDowell mentioned?"
"Nothing solid," Matt said, flopping down on a bench in the middle of the room. "What about you?"
I sat beside him with my messenger bag on my lap, trying to look nonconfrontational. "You know about the break-in at Monograms, right?"
He nodded. "Hard to believe it's a coincidence, don't you think?"
"Impossible to believe. I've been trying to compile a list of suspects." I couldn't avoid the question any longer. "Anyone you can think of, besides Alyse, who might have known which quilt to steal?"
"Just you and me." He had the same amused expression he wore whenever Stefan criticized him. "You're just dying to ask if I stole the quilt, aren't you?"
"I'd rather the detective asked you, but he's probably not all that interested in the theft."
"If I don't have an alibi for last night, are you going to accuse me of killing Tremain too?"
"It's not my job to accuse anyone."
"But you'll wonder." Matt stood and took a leisurely tour around the room without focusing on any of the exhibits. When he returned to the bench, he said, "I usually ignore people when they make stupid assumptions about me, or I distract them into a different train of thought. Neither one's going to work with you, is it?"
I shook my head and waited for him to continue. Sometimes the best way to interrogate someone was not to ask any questions at all but to let him answer the questions he assumed were going to be asked, the ones he was afraid of because the answers were the most incriminating.
"Normally I wouldn't bother to defend myself, but I'm going to make an exception this once." Matt dropped onto the bench beside me again. "I pulled an all-nighter at the Cove Chronicles. Talked to everyone there who might have heard a rumor about a politician getting scammed in an art deal. Came up with half a dozen names, in fact, but they all involved paintings or sculptures, not textiles. I can probably get you affidavits from a dozen people who would remember talking to me last night during whatever time frame you want."
I looked into his eyes, framed by the darkest, thickest eyelashes, and his return gaze was steady. I'd seen plenty of witnesses who could tell a complete fabrication without blinking, so his ability to return a stare didn't persuade me of his honesty. The physical effects of sleep deprivation couldn't be faked, however, and his eyes were definitely red and puffy today. If I hadn't been so distracted earlier, I would have noticed the fatigue on his face as soon as he joined me on the front steps.
"I think we can hold off on the affidavits."
"You believe me?"
"Let's just say I'm not going to haul you down to the police station for more in-depth questioning any time soon. Just one more question, and then I'll drop it. I heard that Tremain threatened to sue you for libel. If the police hear about that, they'll consider you a suspect in both the theft and the murder."
Matt shrugged his way through a yawn. "It's all part of the job. I wasn't worried about it."
He did seem completely unconcerned, but then again, he was exhausted, and that was on top of usually being naturally laid-back. I couldn't be sure if his relaxed attitude was due to a complete lack of concern over the threat or simply being too exhausted to care about anything.
"Are libel suits so common among journalists that you can just shrug it off?"
"Not really. I just didn't think Tremain would come after me. Suing someone as earnest and naïve as Stefan is one thing. Taking me on is quite another."
"Tremain wasn't easy to dissuade," I said. "He was adamant about the legitimacy of his quilts all the way to the end, and we know they weren't what he said they were."
"I could have handled it if he sued me."
"Reporting pays that well, does it?"
"Is that why you paid for my admission to the museum today? You were worried that I was broke? I didn't know you cared." He laughed. "I would be broke if I had to live on what I make as a reporter. Fortunately, I've got other resources. Some investments, and I dabble with my own art. I make a comfortable living. More than comfortable, actually."
"You owe me six bucks for your ticket to the museum then," I said, a little irritated with myself for misjudging him so badly. I rose to my feet. "I'm not earning much of anything these days."
"I'll pick up the tab on our next date." He tugged me back down to the bench. "Now that we've established that I'm not broke and I didn't have a reason to kill Tremain or steal his quilt, what about you? Did you kill him? You were alone, no alibi when it happened. I've got to ask, just like you asked me."
I supposed I couldn't go around asking people if they'd committed a crime without being prepared to answer the same question. I just wished we could have gotten to know each other better before we had to confront something this serious. "I didn't have any reason to kill Tremain. I'd only met him, and while he was an unpleasant person, I was a trial lawyer for fifteen years without ever resorting to killing an opposing party."
"So how do you explain the blood that was on your blouse when we returned to the conference room?"
I hadn't realized he'd noticed. He was a reporter though, and close observation was his stock in trade. "It was my own blood, not Tremain's. The forensics report confirmed it."
"That doesn't clear you completely," Matt said. "You could have gotten injured when you were tussling with Tremain before you clobbered him."
"But I didn't." I needed to change to subject before I revealed too much about my tendency to pass out. "There's another person who might have had blood on her. Do you remember when Alyse came back after our break, and she'd changed her clothes?"
"Yeah. Dropped a cigarette ash and burned a hole in her skirt."
"Do you remember if she changed her shoes too?"
He closed his eyes. "She was wearing sling-back pumps with a substantial heel when we arrived. Afterwards, she was wearing flats."
"You've got quite an eye for detail." I pulled out my phone and opened the list of Tremain's customers. "Are you that good with names? Anyone you recognize?"
Matt had only scrolled through the first page before saying, "More like, who do I not recognize? This looks like a directory of state politicians, from the mayor of Danger Cove to local councilors and even a few people in statewide positions."
"Could one of them have been the politician allegedly swindled by Tremain?"
Matt continued scrolling to the end. "If it was Mayor Kallakala, he wouldn't have tried to cover it up. He's a decent guy. There are a few more likely suspects among the others, but I'd have to talk to my colleagues to know for sure."
"Just don't make any waves yet. I don't want Wolfe to get any more entrenched in his position than he already is."
Matt returned the phone and rubbed at his red eyes. "That might be a problem."
"What don't I know?"
"I wrote a story about art fraud." He gave me an apologetic look. "It ran this morning, but it's been scheduled for weeks. There's nothing specifically about Tremain or you or the museum. It's a general piece on fraud in the art world. Your friend in the prosecutor's office probably won't even see it."
"I hope not, but so far, nothing's gone my way this week, and it's likely to get worse during the quilt show."
"Worried about your speech tomorrow?"
"A little."
"You shouldn't. It'll be fine. I'll be there in the audience, so you don't have to worry about some clueless, condescending reporter covering it."
Great. Just what I needed right now. Something else to worry about.
Instead of the warm, friendly audience who just wanted to share their passion for quilts with me, I was going to have Matt out there, taking notes, like the judge for a law school moot court competition. And not just any moot court competition, but one straight out of a law student's nightmare, where I'd missed all the relevant classes and hadn't done any of the reading, so I was completely unprepared for an event that could make or break my entire career.
* * *
Matt left to get some caffeine, and I went upstairs to see Gil.
Her inner door was open, and she greeted me with, "Please tell me you've got some good news for me. I can't take any more bad news."
"Stefan Anderson's quilt is genuine."
"Oh happy day," Gil sang.
"I'll need to do a little more work to confirm that the quilt is connected with the early lighthouse keeper, but it's possible. Even without the lighthouse connection, it's an amazing quilt."
"I really needed some good news. The board of directors is panicking over the news about Tremain and the possibility the museum will be connected to him, even as distantly as through our sponsorship of the quilt show. I'm also getting phone calls from a slew of Tremain's friends, insisting that the rumors about him are false and demanding that I issue a statement that he was a good friend to the museum. They're even hinting that the museum's state funding will be severely reduced if I don't cooperate."
I dropped my messenger bag on one of the visitors' chairs and sat in the other one. "Was Tremain a good friend to the museum?"
"Not as far as I know," Gil said. "He's not on the current donors' list. I never even heard of him until Dee Madison told me her suspicions a few weeks ago."
"I wonder what his friends are so afraid of. It's not like the prosecutor is going to bring any fraud charges against him now."
"I'd guess they're really more worried about their own reputations than his. It never looks good when a politician is revealed to have consorted with a suspected criminal. They're worried enough that they're not even entrusting the calls to their aides but are calling me directly. I wish we could get that kind of response when we're submitting an application for a grant or looking for a local celebrity to attend an event at the museum."
"It's pretty sad that they'd rather see the murder go unsolved than look foolish in front of their constituents."
"It's not just the politicians who think that way but even some members of my board." Gil picked up a newspaper from her desk. "I was hoping the investigation into Tremain's frauds would be kept low-key, even if the investigation into his murder stayed in the news. Unfortunately, it's not working out that way. The front page of the arts and entertainment section of the Cove Chronicles isn't exactly low-key."
I glanced at the headline, "The Risks of Art Collecting," and didn't need to read the byline. "I haven't read it yet, but Matt told me it didn't mention the museum."
"Just mentioning art forgery is enough for people to start thinking of the museum," Gil said. "I've got another dozen phone messages from local residents worried that the museum got cheated by Tremain."
"What are you going to tell them?"
"At least that answer is simple. We've never bought anything from him."
"Things are looking up then," I said. "I'm planning to write up my report on Stefan's quilt for you tonight in case you want to announce the acquisition tomorrow, and then I'm hoping to get my speech finished for the quilt show so I don't give the guild a reason to disown me. With everything that's been going on, I haven't had much time to work on it this week."
"Quilters never disown anyone," Gil said. "They're more like the Borg, and they'll assimilate you. Next thing you know, you'll be on your hands and knees, crawling around the floor with a needle and thread, basting the layers of their raffle quilt as penance for your botched speech."
"They'd be disappointed all over again. I'm not good with a needle."
Gil smiled. "I hear that's what Emma said when she first met Dee."