2 Knot What It Seams (27 page)

It was a long way back through the enormous parking lot to the community college. Who knew what she’d find as help at the gas station? The best idea seemed to be getting into her car, locking the doors, and driving off.

Her keys, clearly, were in her pocketbook, which had fallen off her arm and was closer to Karen. Beatrice dove for it, then staggered up to run to the car. Karen, furious, grabbed for Beatrice’s arm at the same moment and left scratch marks from her elbow to her wrist.

Fumbling inside her purse, Beatrice’s fingers scrabbled around the bottom edges for her keys. Not feeling them, she rummaged with increasing desperation. Then she heard a bellow from the direction of the car and saw an agitated Miss Sissy sitting in the driver’s seat, beckoning her frantically to the car and pointing at Karen. Beatrice ran to the passenger side of the car, jumped in, and hit the lock button just as Karen flew at the car, beating at it with both hands. In her hurry, Beatrice had dropped the lug wrench. She saw Karen pick it up and swing it at the sedan, breaking off the side mirror and putting a dent in the hood of the car. She lifted the wrench above her head, aiming for the windshield.

Suddenly, the car roared to life. Miss Sissy, a fiendish gleam in her eye, revved the motor loudly. Karen froze, wrench still lifted high, as she saw Miss Sissy’s face. With only a split second to react, she dodged to the side as Miss Sissy stomped on the accelerator. Beatrice’s heart leaped into her throat and lodged there and she desperately clutched the dashboard as they took off at high speed with Miss Sissy giving a raucous battle cry.

“Miss Sissy,” said Beatrice, gasping, “we’re at the end of the parking lot. You’ve got to turn around. There’s a sidewalk. . . .” She turned and saw Karen’s realization that the car was trapped and then saw the woman sprint after them with the wrench.

Miss Sissy, however, was
not
trapped. She cared nothing for parameters like sidewalks or curbs and instead sped up, popped over the curb and sidewalk and into the gas station, alarm still shrieking as they went.

The gas station attendant rushed outside, dialing on his phone as he gaped at the scene. Beatrice prayed he was calling the police. Any police. At this point she wasn’t sure if she was more terrified of the murderous Karen or the maniacal Miss Sissy.

But Karen hadn’t yet given up on them, and at this point she couldn’t. It was either finish off the two women or else go on the lam, since they’d be sure to spill their story to the police. Miss Sissy saw Karen gasping for breath yet still wielding the wrench, so she laughed, pressing the accelerator down again. The car surged out of the gas station and onto the main road. Or, rather, onto the grassy median
next
to the main road. Karen, quite the endurance runner, sprinted behind them, waving the wrench.

Their wild ride was finally over when Beatrice saw the flickering blue lights of a police car approaching them. She caught Karen’s swift expression of horror as she noticed them, too.

Ramsay stopped the car with a jolt and jogged up at a much faster pace than usual. With him was Wyatt, looking both worried and confused. “Here, now,” said Ramsay in his usual calm, competent way as if he were talking to someone completely rational instead of someone who’d been waving a lug wrench over her head at a car. “What’s all this? Karen? What’s going on?”

Karen dropped her weapon and started sobbing at the sight of Wyatt and screeched, “It’s all her fault!” Karen pointed at Beatrice as she cautiously got out of her car. “All her fault!”

Ramsay said mildly, “I’d say that’s extremely unlikely. From what I saw, you were bent on bashing in Beatrice’s car. Beatrice doesn’t appear to be armed with anything other than a pocketbook, unless you count Miss Sissy as a deadly weapon. I’m thinking there’s not much that Beatrice could have done to be at fault—except to know too much.” He turned to look at Beatrice, who’d weakly stumbled out and was sagging against her car for support. “Is that right, Beatrice? You knew a little too much for your own good?”

Beatrice stared at Karen, whose face was still contorted with both anger and fear, then at Wyatt. He reached an arm out automatically to her as she weakly tried to push herself off the car. Karen howled in frustration and fury at losing.

* * *

Yet another quilt show descended into chaos as Ramsay put Karen in the back of the police car. Meadow had seen the police car’s lights as she’d peeked outside to see what was keeping her precious bags of ice. And, probably, hoping that it was some sort of tender moment between Wyatt and Beatrice that was creating the delay . . . since she’d trumped up a reason for Ramsay and Wyatt to both attend the quilt show finale.

Instead she realized that there was some sort of arrest or Bad Thing happening and quickly assembled what amounted to a mob of quilters to investigate and make sure Beatrice was all right.

“What happened?” gasped Meadow as she finally reached the group at the far end of the parking lot. “What on
earth
happened?” She saw a figure in the backseat of Ramsay’s police car and pushed her way closer.

“Meadow!” barked Ramsay, still in the process of both filling out a report and calling in one to the state police.

But she’d already edged close enough to see who was in the backseat. “Karen!” She spun around and hollered at the other quilters, “It’s
Karen
! And look at Beatrice! She looks
horrible
!”

Beatrice had seen better days, that was for sure. Grappling with the pavement a second time wasn’t what her body had needed. Now she had some additional scrapes and already felt the bruises forming. All she really wanted now was a soft bed and the relaxing snores of a napping corgi nearby.

While the quilters gaped at both the injured Beatrice and the cuffed Karen, Meadow whipped out her cell phone. “Beatrice, I’m going to interrupt Piper at the teacher training. This is an emergency—Piper! Everything is fine. Just fine. Except your mama got scraped up again. Yes. But
Karen
is the bad guy. She’s been captured, so everything will be back to normal soon.” She put her phone away and said to Beatrice, “She’s on her way here.”

Ramsay, who’d hung up from his own phone call, sighed. “Let’s hope it
will
be back to normal soon. I can’t stand any more
ab-
normal.” He gazed blankly into the darkness for a second or two, and Beatrice imagined he was fondly thinking of a thin volume by Thoreau that was perhaps tucked into his police car somewhere.

He must have been able to read her mind because he said sadly to Beatrice, “I have a feeling this is
not
the kind of wildness that Thoreau was talking about in his essay on nature in ‘Walking.’”

Beatrice gave a gasping laugh, still trying to calm her ferociously beating heart. “I’m sure Thoreau would say that Karen just didn’t spend enough time outside and that made her unhinged.”

“What actually was behind all this?” asked Ramsay. “I know she was ultracompetitive, but why? What made her turn out that way?”

“From what I’ve gathered,” said Beatrice, “Karen desperately needed that validation and support and praise from the quilters. Her parents made her feel that she was never quite good enough. Then she lost them early in her life and ended up seeking that praise, that recognition through quilting. Which made sense—it was something she had natural talent with.”

Meadow clucked at her husband. “Ramsay, do you need Beatrice anymore? Because she looks like she’s about to drop and I think she should be sitting down and having a wee drop of something to drink. I swear, that’s a man for you. No notice of any of the peripheral issues!”

Ramsay said, “No, I think that’s all for now. Sorry, Beatrice. Do you want me to call you an ambulance to get you checked out? That was quite a tumble you took.”

She shook her head. “I’m fine. Sore, but fine. There’s nothing a hospital would do besides put some antiseptic and bandages on me.

“Where’s Miss Sissy?” she asked. “She sort of saved me. Well, she saved me, then endangered me, actually. Where did she go?”

“Posy has already hustled her away. She said Miss Sissy had had enough excitement for one night.” Meadow stared at the community college, gauging the long walk back. “That’s too far for you to walk. And your car looks like it needs a rest, too.”

It had a very large dent in it. And had probably suffered a mechanical heart attack from being driven by Miss Sissy. “I think it’s drivable, but . . . yes. It’s going to need some repairs, and I probably need to get the car alarm fixed at the same time as the dent. By the time I’ve had a rest, maybe Piper can drive me back home. I’m too shaken up to drive right now, anyway.”

Georgia had parked nearby and offered to drive Beatrice to the front entrance. Meadow jumped in Georgia’s car, too. But then she hopped back out again and went up close to the police car. “Karen,” she called out in her booming voice. “By the way? You lost tonight.”

Meadow spun around and jumped right into Georgia’s car, nose high in the air.

“But, Meadow,” said Georgia as she carefully took her cargo to the entrance of the college. “Karen didn’t. She won every single category.”

“She certainly didn’t! Anyone who leaves a quilt show in a police car with a lifetime in prison ahead of her is certainly not a winner. Certainly
not
!”

Meadow shoved her car door open energetically as soon as Georgia pulled up to the curb and then proceeded to shepherd Beatrice out of the car, clucking as she went. “Murdering two people! Trying to kill you! Trying to kill you
twice
!” Meadow’s face was splotched with fury.

Georgia hovered in their wake. “It’s awful. Savannah was right about what she saw and when she saw it. I guess she’ll be all right to testify about it in court. If it comes to that, which hopefully it won’t.”

Meadow frowned in confusion, and Georgia quickly filled her in. She finished with “I don’t mind you knowing, Meadow, since you already know about poor Savannah’s problem. I just hope it doesn’t have to go too much further.”

“Well, it surely shouldn’t. After all,” said Meadow, “it should be enough that Karen went berserk out in the parking lot and tried to kill Beatrice!” She seemed stuck on this idea. “I think that should be evidence enough as to her character. With any luck, she’s confessed to the whole thing by now.”

“She basically confessed to me, anyway,” said Beatrice. “So I can always testify against her.”

Meadow was ready to fixate back on her favorite theme again. “So she was killing off the new members of the Village Quilters!” she said, through gritted teeth.

“Well, I don’t think the Village Quilter connection had anything to do with it,” said Beatrice, feeling tired. “She had her own reasons for the murders.”

“Which were?” asked Meadow huffily. “I’m also mad that we picked a murderer to be part of the Village Quilters.” She passed by the gymnasium and on to a nearby classroom. She turned on the lights, motioned Beatrice to a chair, and then sat down opposite from her. “Wait. Hold that thought. Let’s get you cleaned up first. I most definitely don’t want Piper to see her mama looking like this.”

Fifteen minutes later, Meadow was satisfied with her handiwork. Georgia had returned to Savannah, worried that this latest event was going to make her even more stressed out. Meadow had, amazingly, turned over the rest of the quilt show program to another organizer and hadn’t mentioned ice once. She’d been, in fact, very helpful. Meadow somehow scrounged up a first aid kit from the school’s kitchen and had cleaned and bandaged up every visible scrape. Then she took a damp towel and was prepared to spot-clean the dirt from Beatrice’s clothes like a mother cat cleaning a kitten’s coat . . . until Beatrice stopped her. “Thanks, Meadow. I think I can handle that part.”

“So, let’s get back to the subject. What turned Karen into a psycho?”

Beatrice snorted. “I don’t think she was a
psycho
, per se. Although the moment she smashed my car with the lug wrench made me wonder. I think her problem was her ego. At least, that’s what I’m going to tell Ramsay.”

“Oh, okay. So she had a big head,” said Meadow.

“But maybe a little insecure, too. She really, really wanted to win. She was supercompetitive and she didn’t want to be held back. And that’s all that Jo Paxton was doing, in Karen’s opinion—holding her back from winning. Jo had a pretty healthy ego herself, and
she
liked to win. She probably thought Karen was some young upstart. Jo made sure Karen didn’t do well at the shows she judged,” said Beatrice.

“Hmm. I can see that. And Jo was always insulting Karen’s quilts, too, don’t you think?” asked Meadow, gazing at the classroom ceiling in a thoughtful way.

“I heard Jo put down Karen’s choice of fabric in the Patchwork Cottage. I think that made Karen furious and even more determined to have her meet with an ‘accident.’ But Opal figured out that Karen was behind Jo’s death, so Karen had to get rid of Opal. That way, Karen could stay out of jail and keep winning quilt shows.”

“She knew that you were hot on her trail, so she realized she had to get rid of
you
, too,” said Meadow.

“I don’t think that’s all of the reason. She might have been upset that I was poking around too much, but it wasn’t like I’d told her I knew she was behind the murders.
I
didn’t even add it all up until this evening,” said Beatrice.

“So what made her come after you?”

“I think,” said Beatrice delicately, “that it was Wyatt.”

Meadow gasped. “You mean, because she was competing with you over Wyatt? Because she wanted to win Wyatt’s heart and she thought she had to eliminate the competition?”

Beatrice gave a small shrug. “Apparently so. She made some kind of reference to that. It’s a little embarrassing, because
as you know
, there’s absolutely nothing going on between Wyatt and me. Despite your efforts to the contrary.”

Meadow, who was facing the door, suddenly put a stricken hand to her chest.

Beatrice turned slowly to see Wyatt standing there with a small smile, a plate of food and a drink, and a tired look in his eye. If he’d heard what she’d said . . . well, he must have heard it. Couldn’t
not
have heard it. But he politely pretended not to. “Beatrice, I’m so glad to see that you’re all right. You must have been terrified. It terrified
me
.” He handed her the plate of snacks that he’d put together for her and put the cup down on a nearby desk.