A Murder of Taste: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery (26 page)

Bill McKay, with Janna at his side, concluded the auction with a gracious thanks to Picasso St. Pierre for the gift of his quilt, and an equal thanks to the winner of the evening’s auction, Mrs. Portia Paltrow.

The crowd loved it all, the competition, the cause, the food and the wine and the invitation to move into the other room where there’d be dancing and music.

“Po!” Kate said, weaving her way through the crowd to Po’s side. “I can’t believe it. You have Laurel’s quilt. I had no idea you were going to do this.”

Po smiled, but she could hardly find her voice. And she surely couldn’t admit that she had no earthly intention of spending $10,000 on a quilt when she walked through the door three hours ago. She took a deep breath to ward off the wave of weariness that pressed down on her. Max brought her a glass of water and she nodded in gratitude. She drained the glass.

“Po, are you all right?” Kate asked, noticing Po’s demeanor.

“I’m fine, honey,” Po said. “Tired, is all. I’ve never won an auction before.”

“Would you like us to take you home?”

“No, go dance. You’ve got to dance with the one who brung you, didn’t you know?”

“Of course I know. You and mom used to recite that silly ditty to me before every dance I ever went to.”

“Well, then let’s do it,” P.J. said, cupping her elbow in the palm of his hand. “Po, you sit, we’ll dance. Max, you keep an eye on Po. I don’t trust her these days.” He nodded at Max, then swept Kate onto the dance floor and out of their sight.

As Kate and P.J. made their way to the dance floor, Bill walked up, his arm outstretched to shake Po’s hand. “Congratulations, m’lady. You’ve got yourself a magnificent quilt, and the SafeHome fund has a generous contribution.”

“Thank you, Billy,” Po said.

“You look a little tired. Max? Want to give a generous lady a ride home?”

“I’m not ready just yet, Billy, I’d like to collect my quilt first. I believe the ladies are taking it down.”

“It may take awhile, Po. I hear it took them all afternoon to put it up after Picasso dropped it off. I’ll have a couple of the fellows help me fold and wrap it, and I’ll drop it off myself tomorrow.”

Meredith Mellon squeezed her beaded body in front of Bill and gave Po a hug. “You are wonderful, Po,” she said. “What a nice gift.” She turned toward Bill. “And as for you, sir, you are wanted in the lobby. There’s a photographer waiting to take a picture of you and Janna for Kansas City’s Independent.” Bill looked at Po, then glanced over toward the lobby where the photographer stood over his pile of equipment. Janna stood next to him, waiting for Bill. “Po, you’ll be okay?” he asked.

“Come, Bill. This is important for your campaign,” Meredith instructed, and she took him by the arm, leading him away.

“Max,” Po said abruptly. “Would you please take me home?”

It took Max and Leah’s husband, Tim Sarandon, to get the quilt folded and placed in the back of Max’s Pathfinder, but within ten minutes, Po and Max were climbing into the car and bringing the engine to life.

“Did you tell Kate you were leaving, Po? Won’t she worry?”

Po frowned. She should have told Kate before she went onto the dance floor. But she’d let Phoebe know, so the word would pass to Kate and she would know Po was fine. It was a good moment to sneak out without causing commotion, and Po didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She just wanted to be home. She wanted to be home with her quilt. She needed to know she was right before she called in the police and ruined a person’s life.

***

Kate stood on the side porch of the club, watching Max’s car race off into the night. She’d left P.J. alone on the dance floor, rushing to find Po. She had finally remembered. She knew who told her where Laurel St. Pierre was thrown into the Emerald River—and she needed to tell Po.

***

Po and Max drove down the curving drive, passed the railed fields where the horses grazed, and headed home. They drove in silence for several miles, crossing over the bridge, where it all began, then past the sleeping Elderberry neighborhood.

“He was bidding for someone else,” Max finally said. Although he spoke the words, they were pulled from Po’s thoughts.

Po nodded. “I could see the exchange, but only because I was looking for it.”

“I should have seen everything, Po. Should have seen it years ago. The company was playing God, manipulating people’s lives.”

“It wasn’t the company,” Po said. “It was the man at the top. He held the strings, Max. People did what he wanted.”

Max turned into Po’s driveway and pulled the car up to the back door. Without a word they got out of the car, opened the back of Max’s SUV, and gently removed their precious cargo. Around them the night was still and black, the warm spring air and sweet smell of the lilac bushes masking the dread in Po’s heart.

Po held the door open for Max, then switched on lights as Max carried the quilt over to the kitchen table.

“Max, I didn’t mean to involve you in this—”

“Po, I became involved when I sent money to Ann Woods’ aunt in New York. I didn’t realize until we put pieces together today that it was probably used for hospital bills for Ann, or whatever they arranged for her and the baby. But it doesn’t matter. I was involved when the money from the foundation was used to buy Al Woods a house. It didn’t make sense to a lot of us, but no one talked about it. No one knew, or if they did, they didn’t say, that it was to cover up the family’s sins. But we didn’t know because we didn’t ask or look or try to put it all together.”

Po waved Max’s words away and walked over to the quilt. “Max, it’s done. The important thing now is to prove it and not let any more lives be torn apart in the process. And I think Laurel’s quilt holds the answer. Picasso told me this was Laurel’s child, the one she could never have. Her life, he said. I think Picasso meant those words far more literally than he even knew. Laurel was blackmailing people, or at the least, holding information that would ruin their lives. Max, if I’m right, this quilt is the key to Laurel’s life—and to her death.”

Gently, as if rubbing a baby’s back, Po padded the quilt around the edges. Esther had used a thick batting for the interlining and Po couldn’t feel any bumps in it. Her heart was tight in her chest. Somehow she knew the quilt had to be the answer. Or a murderer would go free. She lifted the edge of the quilt and looked at the double binding Esther had used to finish the edges, making them strong, less likely to tear or come apart. And then Po saw it. The careful disruption of the quilting pattern, the new threads that held the binding on. The fabric was slightly darker along a portion of the edge, probably oil from Laurel’s hands as she sat with the quilt, pulling it apart, and burying her life inside of it.

Po took a scissors from the kitchen drawer and began snipping the new stitches Laurel had applied to the backing. She must have done this many times, Po thought. Carefully, she smoothed the binding flat against the table, sliding her fingers beneath the double layer of batting. Her fingers slipped in easily and immediately touched up against stiff paper. Slowly Po pulled out an envelope buried between the layers of fill. She reached in again, and found three more pieces of paper hidden in Laurel’s quilt.

Max watched in silence as Po pulled the envelopes from the quilt. “How did you know, Po?”

“It was Picasso. He told me Laurel used to take the quilt down all the time to repair it and dust it. When I looked at it more closely, I realized it wouldn’t have needed that kind of repair. Esther was a master seamstress and quilter. She used double binding on this quilt and strong quilting thread. Hanging on a wall wouldn’t cause it to fall apart. Laurel was doing something else with it.

“And then there was the break-in at Picasso’s. Why would anyone break into his house and not take some of the lovely things Laurel had purchased? He or she was looking for something, and they didn’t find it. There had to be something there that Laurel had hidden and someone wanted. What better place to hide the secrets of her life than in her mother’s quilt?”

The envelopes weren’t sealed, and Po pulled a yellowed photograph out of the first one. She held it up to the light and recognized Esther Woods. She was sitting on a couch with her arms wrapped around a little girl at her side. It was Laurel and her mother, in maybe one of the few peaceful moments of their lives. The second envelope was bigger and held a check for $50,000 made out to Ann Woods from United Quarry and never cashed.

Beside her, Max recognized his own signature and stiffened. “Now I know why she hated me so. She knew all along I was somehow involved in sending the money.”

Her payoff, Po thought. Have your baby and stay out of our lives. And he’d made sure she couldn’t come back home—Al Woods wouldn’t allow it now. The last envelope had legal papers—a medical report, and a birth certificate and death certificate, all in one package. It was for Ann’s baby, born too early and with too much trauma to make it in life. And a medical record detailing the damage to her body that would prevent more pregnancies. Po put on her glasses and read the fine print on the birth certificate. Ann Woods was listed as the mother, and, as Po had suspected, probably for days now, Bill McKay was the father. The high school football player—captain of the idolized Hatchets, with whom Ann had fallen in love. And who on a dare, perhaps, got her pregnant and then threw her away.

“I never thought of looking in the quilt for the records until Picasso told me about it the other night in the restaurant, and told me how she treated it. You’re smarter than I am, Po.”

Po and Max spun around and stared at Bill McKay. He’d come in the front door, still elegant in his Italian suit, and stood just inside the dark hallway, staring at the two figures standing over the quilt. Near him, one step in front, was Kate.

Po’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes were riveted to the gun pressed tightly into Kate’s back.

“Bill …” Po began. She took a step toward Kate, her arms reaching out to her.

“Back up,” Bill said.

His voice was eerily calm. They could have been talking about his campaign, or P.J. scoring a touchdown.

Bill looked sideways at Kate. “Pretty Kate should have minded her own business. I found her out in front, headed for your back door.”

Bill moved closer to the table, pushing Kate along with him and urging Max and Kate to step back. He stared down at the photograph and papers spread across the top of the quilt. The birth certificate was in the center and his name popped up off the bottom of the page. Bill turned white. “What a fool she was,” he said. “It was all a joke, you know. The football team dared me. They do it every year. Quarterback dare. But she wasn’t supposed to get pregnant. Then she wanted me to marry her!” A laugh followed, and he shook his head and looked at Max and Po, as if they would shake their head and tsk at Ann Woods’ foolishness. And then he added quietly, “I didn’t even know her name. I thought it was Carrie.”

Beside him Kate’s blood churned and her face turned bright red with anger. Watching her from across the room, Po felt her anger and prayed she wouldn’t do anything foolish.

“That’s why you’d never eat at Picasso’s,” Po said calmly, trying to lessen the electricity in the room.

Bill nodded. “I knew she was here—she called me once and told me who she was, that she’d lost the kid. Then she told me she thought the whole town would be interested in the story, and she had all the pieces she needed to make it believable.”

“And this wasn’t as easy to clean up as when your father neatly sent Ann away and paid off Al Woods,” Po said. Po suspected strongly that the drunken accident that took Ann’s parents to their death was far more than that. Brakes had probably been tampered with, and Al and Esther died in a very convenient accident. It would never be proven now, but the tragedy of Laurel’s death could be.

“I knew your father owned several companies,” Po continued, always keeping Kate in the corner of her eye, as if seeing her there would keep her safe. Talking to Bill seemed to calm him some, so Po continued, her heart wedged painfully in her chest. “But it wasn’t until I read the accounts of the accident, then probed a little deeper into United Quarry, that I realized Jackson McKay was the CEO.”

“My dad was a genius at keeping things in separate compartments, even me. But he was never mayor.” Bill thought he heard a noise and glanced toward the back door, then back to Po and Max. He nodded toward the door. “My car is down the street. It’s good you’re both here. Maybe once you’re gone, this can end. It would have all been okay, you know, if she hadn’t come back. Couldn’t leave it alone. She was going to package it all up, then send it all to the paper.

Foolish, horrible twit.” He looked at Po calmly and for a minute they could have been talking about the weather. “My father’s not the only one who can plan, you see. It’s all set up for me now. Janna’s father will invest in my ventures. I’ll be a successful businessman. Then mayor—they like me, you know, all these people. Even Picasso likes me. My life will be bigger than Jackson T. McKay ever dreamed of.”

The bitterness in his voice startled Po for a minute. “Billy, I don’t think you want to harm more people. This doesn’t help you get back at your dad. Maybe you didn’t even mean to harm Laurel.”