A Murder of Taste: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery (3 page)

“These are the fish that inspired the design,” Susan explained. At 39, Susan had gone back to school herself, and was refining her natural talent in pursuit of a degree in fiber arts. “The quilt will have an enormous pot at the bottom, and we’re recreating these lovely fish in beautiful colors. It will be wonderful in this room.”

“I still think doing an appliquéd quilt is going to drive me to drink,” Maggie Helmers declared. “I hate appliqué, friends. Those little tiny pieces will make me crazy.” Maggie found great solace in being a member of the Queen Bee Quilters. It was her therapy, she often said. A time away from her thriving veterinary clinic to refresh her spirit and send her back to caring for Crestwood’s pets with renewed love and vigor. But her quilting experience was limited to backing small shapes with freezer paper, then sewing them up on her mother’s old machine. But no matter what she did, her quilting friends helped her make it look beautiful. Appliqué, however, was a little too far out of her comfortable box.

“Mags,” Leah said, “I understand how you feel. But I promise, the pieced background demands your special touch. You won’t touch a piece of appliqué.”

Maggie sighed with relief and took a sip of the wine Picasso had graciously sent over to their table earlier.

“So, Picasso, what do you think?” Po asked.

The Queen Bees quilting group had created many quilts in its thirty-year history. Members moved away or died, and daughters or friends were added, but the love and passion for the art was a staple and was passed along seamlessly. When Picasso asked for a quilt to hang in his restaurant—a tribute to his mother—they had agreed instantly.

Picasso beamed in delight as he looked at the pictures.

“Les poisson will fly across the fabric beneath the magic of your lovely fingers!”

A short distance away, Laurel St. Pierre surveyed the room, her slate blue eyes glancing back into the kitchen through the round window in the door, then to the front door. She glanced at her watch. It was early. Laurel took a slow, deep breath and rotated her shoulders beneath the green silk jacket. She looked again at the group of women sitting across the room. They were gesturing excitedly, moving the photographs around, chatting.

Her eyes settled on Kate and she frowned. Kate Simpson. Memories crushed down on Laurel painfully, and she pressed her long fingers against her temple. The headaches were beginning again. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, focusing on anything to take away the pain.

Picasso was still at the table, wedged in between Kate and Portia Paltrow, leaning over the pictures with a look of utter delight on his plump face. His hair was thinning, she noticed, small wisps of brown scattered across the top. Foolish old man, she thought. Boring, silly Frenchman. Laurel brushed her hand across her forehead, staring intently at the hunched figure of her husband. She’d actually loved him once. Or had she? He’d certainly been good to her, scooping her up from a dreadful life—a horrible waitressing job in New York and that dreary fourth floor walk-up. He’d given her a home, more money than she had ever dreamed of, everything she needed to turn from a mouse into Laurel St. Pierre, an elegant, beautiful woman. He’d even moved to Crestwood when she wanted to get away from the city. He had been so useful. Necessary even. But that was about over now. The score was even, or almost so. And then she would move on and finally begin her life. Laurel looked again at Picasso and her lips tightened, her head throbbing.

Look at you standing there, your forehead sweaty, your tummy bulging beneath that awful apron.
The words floated inside Laurel’s pained head, an uninvited, disturbing chant.
Oh, Picasso, I wish you were dead.

CHAPTER 2

When Kate and Po left Picasso’s bistro a short while later, the sky had darkened and a soft breeze stirred the new buds on the trees lining Elderberry Road. Kate looped her arm through Po’s and the two walked slowly down the street toward Po’s car.

Although Po herself stood five feet seven in her bare feet, Kate was two inches taller. Her auburn hair, streaked with bronze, hung thick and shiny about her shoulders. Tonight she wore shiny champagne-colored slacks that hugged her hips, a simple black t-shirt, and had thrown a sweater carelessly across her shoulders, knotting the arms in front.

Po turned her head to look at Kate, and thought, as she often did, how proud Liz Simpson would be of her only child. She’s decent and kind, Po thought—if a bit unpredictable. And she’s totally oblivious of the fact that strangers sometimes stop on the street to look at her, wondering if they’ve seen her in some romantic comedy with Richard Gere or George Clooney.

“Why doesn’t everyone live in Kansas in the springtime?” Kate said, interrupting Po’s thoughts. She looked up at the clear spring sky. The big dipper hung low, nearly close enough to touch, Kate thought. Or to jump right in and take a ride.

Po laughed. “You escaped doing it for several years, if memory serves me right. And very happily so!”

Kate’s journey back to Kansas to care for her mother before she died was intended to be brief, but a year later she was still here, and “still visiting,” she insisted to Po when-ever the topic of bringing her furniture back from Boston came up.

“I think I always visited in springtime,” Kate answered smugly.

At Gus Schuette’s bookstore, Kate and Po paused to check out the new books Gus had placed in his window. “Well, will you look at Bill McKay,” Kate said, pointing to a poster in the back of the window.

Po peered past a display of Ed Bain mysteries to the picture of Bill McKay, a handsome hometown boy who had gone through school with her daughter, Sophie, before going off to Yale. “My, Billy has certainly made his parents proud, hasn’t he?” she said.
Meet the author
, the sign read. And below, Gus had added,
Crestwood’s youngest mayoral candidate.

“Well, he tries.” It was a deep voice that answered Po’s question, and Kate spun around, nearly landing in the arms of Bill McKay.

“You saying good things about me?” Bill asked, lifting one eyebrow.

Kate laughed. “You’re just as conceited as you were in high school, Bill McKay.”

“But it looks good on me, right?” Bill shoved his hands in the pockets of his finely tailored pants. “And life itself looks good on you two beautiful ladies. You fine, Po?”

“Doing fine, Billy.” As a youngster, Bill McKay was one of those kids parents liked as much as their kids did. Even when he was in trouble, he’d smile in a disarming way that made you forget he’d chased a ball into your garden, crushing all the new daffodils, or thrown your paper into the bird bath three mornings in a row. Po remembered her daughter Sophie going to a dance with him and being thrilled that the class president had chosen her. And she also remembered Bill being kind and gentle when the high school crush ended. Somehow they’d even stayed friends, if she remembered right.

“Now, how lucky can a guy be?” Bill McKay said, spreading his arms wide.

“Probably not much more than this, Billy,” Kate said. Kate was a lowly freshman at Crestwood High when Bill McKay was the senior boy that every girl in her class fell madly in love with. And getting to know him on equal footing, teasing him now and then, was something Kate found enormously rewarding as an adult. She also thought he was pretty cute.

“So you wrote a book, Billy.” she said. “About what?”

“It’s nothing. It’s kind of an inspirational book for kids,” he said. “It’s about living in a small town and seeking your dream. Gus is making more of it than it deserves.”

“Well, it sounds like you’re doing exactly that, Bill—seeking your dreams,” Po said. “Your parents must be proud.” The McKays had lived for years in Po’s comfortable neighborhood, occupying a large and stately brick home that was known by everyone in town as the McKay Mansion. Bill’s dad owned several companies in Crestwood and Kansas City, and commanded great respect from all who knew him, though word had it he wasn’t an easy man to work for. Nor, Po suspected, was he an easy man to have as a father. Though Billy had wormed his way into her life, she and Sam were never that fond of the elder McKays.

“They’re in Florida most of the time now. Living the good life,” Bill said.

“And their businesses?” Po asked.

“I’m handling one—the commercial real estate.”

Just then a young woman carrying one of Gus’s signature book bags stepped out of the book store and walked over to Bill, sliding into his side. She smiled at Po and Kate.

“Kate and Po,” Bill said, “I’d like you to meet Janna Hathaway, my fiancé. Janna, Kate and I went to high school together, and Po is an old friend of my parents and a neighbor. She helped finance my first ten-speed by letting me mow her lawn one summer.”

Janna moved closer to Bill, one arm wrapping around his waist. She smiled politely, her eyes lingering for a few seconds on Kate, then focusing back on Bill’s face.

Kate observed the young woman with the plain features. Except for her Prada bag and elegant Italian leather jacket, she was the kind of person who could easily get lost in a crowd, her brown hair thin, her nose a little too short, and her eyebrows meeting too close together to emphasize her pretty brown eyes. But mostly she was the opposite of any of the girls Bill McKay had dated, except maybe the underclassmen with whom he flirted, then walked away, unknowingly leaving behind a pile of broken hearts. She was definitely not the beauties who openly sought out Bill McKay with his Kennedyesque aura.

Po was asking about the wedding, and Kate half-listened as Janna explained that the preparations were nearly complete, though the wedding was scheduled for the next spring nearly a year off. She was describing an elaborate wedding that Kate suspected would highlight the social season. Bill seemed slightly embarrassed at the preparations, but listened politely as Janna talked

“Janna’s from St. Louis,” Bill said finally, steering the conversation away from the wedding. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and Janna seemed to melt into the warmth of his body.

“My father is a banker and investor,” she said. “In fact, he’ll be doing some business with Bill soon, helping him build his business.”

“That’s nice,” Po said. She watched the three young people: Kate, who wouldn’t know a pedigree if it were wrapped around her neck; Bill, whose father had tried to mold his only son in his likeness—disarming good looks and a little too impressed with power and titles and attentiveness to who owned what. But Bill McKay seemed to have avoided some of that, and from all reports, had his head on straight. Janna might be another story, and Po wondered briefly if insecurity caused her to display her family’s standing so openly.

“We’re building a house out on the east side of town,” Bill said to both of them. “Out past Canterbury College. Janna’s here for awhile to start the decorating process.”

“Kate, you’ll have to tell me what Bill was like in high school,” Janna said. “Were you friends?” She lifted herself tall on her Manolo Blahnik shoes as she talked.

“Bill knew everyone in school, Janna,” Kate said. She looked up at Bill. “You were pretty much everyone’s friend, the way I remember it, Billy. I was a lowly freshman, and you even talked to me. Especially around the time of class elections.”