Murder by Artifact (Five Star Mystery Series) (2 page)

“On the donation called ‘the murder quilt.’ ” Jane’s honeyed voice flowed through the receiver. “Honestly, Theo, aren’t you listening to me? That’s what the paper pinned to the front calls it. There’s a short history written on the exhibition release form. I think you need to come see this quilt, and soon.”

Theo didn’t want to admit she had not been paying strict attention. If she did, Jane’s feelings would be hurt and Theo wanted to avoid doing that. “How soon?”

“Now.” Jane’s voice held a fascinating mixture of excitement and command.

“Okay.” Theo conceded, recognizing a summons from her mother-in-law when she heard one. “Who donated
this
quilt? It’s certainly a catchier name than ‘grandmother’s favorite.’ ”

Jane didn’t quite snort. Her soft laugh sounded like an agreement to Theo.

“Well, it’s not exactly a donation,” said Jane. “You’ll never guess who’s offering to loan it to the museum for a while.” Without waiting for a response, Jane hung up on her.

Theo doubted Jane and her sister had expected such an enormous outpouring of family artifacts when they announced their plans to create a folk museum in Park County, Tennessee. Many of the relics were more trash than treasure. People left boxes of chipped canning jars, scythes, flax hackles, magazines and whatever else they wanted to get rid of at the new museum site. At last count, the ladies had eighteen horse collars stacked in a storage shed. None of them were in good shape.

In the past month, Theo had received several summonses to come see antique quilts. As a dedicated quilter and owner of Theo’s Quilt Shop, it was her pleasure. Usually. A few of the items were excessively worn, dirty and smelled of mildew. The owners of those either hoped for a cash buyout or for major, free repairs. The ploy wouldn’t work. Some things shouldn’t be saved.

As long as she wasn’t getting any work done, Theo decided to drag Nina along as reinforcement. Her best friend loved spur-of-the-moment activities almost as much as she loved chocolate. When Nina answered the phone, Theo spoke without preamble.

“You have nothing better to do now that school’s out, so put some shoes on. I’ll be by to get you in five minutes.”

Nina snickered softly. “Okay, will you at least tell me what this is about?”

“Someone donated a quilt Jane’s all excited about and she won’t tell me where she got it.” Theo disconnected the call.

Pulling her keys out of her purse, she clattered down the stairs from her studio into her fabric store and nearly plowed into a customer. Summer brought lots of tourists into the shop. “Oops, pardon me.”

The shopper turned and smiled. She held a small, dark-eyed boy in her arms. “Hello, Theo, do you remember me?”

Theo paused, considering. The woman looked to be in her mid-thirties like herself. Attractive rather than pretty, she had large blue eyes, short dark hair and a wide mouth coated with flame-red lipstick. Theo thought maybe they had been in school together, but which one? Silersville High or the University of Tennessee? “You do look familiar.” Theo tilted her head. “I’m afraid your name escapes me.”

“You were talking to my uncle just the other day.” The boy squirmed and the woman changed her grip, exposing a deformed thumb.

The sight of the unusual thumb jogged her memory. “Vicky Parker.” High school. Vicky had lived up the road from Nina for only a few months and they had all gone to high school together. Theo remembered Vicky had an unsavory reputation and a nasty attitude for which she had earned the nickname “Icky Vicky.” Theo smiled. People grew up a lot after high school. “How are you? Have you moved back here?”

“No. We’re just visiting.” She squeezed the little boy and he giggled.

“You’ve certainly got a handsome little boy.” Theo grinned at the child.

“Thanks.” Vicky ran a protective hand over his shoulder blades, holding him still. “I wanted to come by and say hi. You’re about the only person I liked when I lived here.”

“Really?” Surprised, Theo considered their history. She doubted they had exchanged more than twenty words in the short time they were in school together. Vicky had actually been in the class behind hers.

“Yeah. I felt sorry for you ’cause you lived with those creepy old people.” She leaned closer, invading Theo’s space. She reeked of cigarette smoke. “I heard they wouldn’t even let you watch television or talk on the phone and treated you like a slave.”

Theo felt like she was trapped between an ashtray and the wall. In a lightning quick move, Vicky’s little boy pressed sticky fingers on the lenses of her glasses.

Theo slipped her glasses off and cleaned them on the bottom of her shirt. “They were my grandparents and I wasn’t a slave.”

“If you say so.” Vicky lifted her eyebrows.

Although she loved her grandparents, Theo had to admit Vicky wasn’t too far off the mark about some of their rules. Stepping out of the little boy’s reach, she replaced her glasses and glanced at her watch. She began to sidle toward the back door. “Sorry, Vicky, I’m late for an appointment and have to leave now.” Before she could stop her mouth, she found herself saying something she knew was stupid. “Come by again when you’re in town and we’ll have a nice talk. Over lunch maybe.”

“I’d love to.” Vicky grinned and followed Theo through the doorway, watching her. She spoke softly to the boy and waved his little arm with her hand. “Say bye-bye, Theo.” Vicky’s smile, as wide as it was, didn’t reach her eyes.

Theo thought her expression looked oddly like triumph. But why?

With a groan, she climbed into her car and turned the key. For a change, the minivan started immediately. Theo put it in gear, thinking she and Vicky didn’t have enough memories in common to get them through ordering coffee.

She mulled over the unexpected interaction as she drove to Nina’s house. Something about it disturbed her. Goose bumps rose on her arms. Theo wondered what put such a satisfied expression on Vicky’s face. It was as though she had wanted Theo to invite her to do something together but not for the expected reasons.

Addressed to “Sheriff Marc Antony Abernathy, Personal,” a plain white envelope rested on the top of Tony’s morning mail. He glanced at the envelopes under it. As usual, most of the rest of the mail was addressed impersonally to Sheriff, Park County. Half curious and half irritated when someone used his whole name, Tony slit the top of the envelope.

A newspaper photograph fell out and fluttered to his desk. Tony left it there while he read the accompanying note. Written on an ordinary index card, it simply read, “There’s more.” Although scribbled in green crayon, there was nothing childish about the message.

His eyes moved to the fallen rectangle of newspaper. The photograph showed his own face and the bones of a human hand he held. The article had been torn from the
Silersville Gazette
, their twice-weekly local paper. There was no date on the clipping. Tony didn’t need one. It was now June, and he remembered the incident had happened in March.

The sudden chill running through him had nothing to do with the refrigerated air blasting from the overworked air conditioner. An unexpected weather front had trapped a pocket of unusually hot and humid air over East Tennessee.

The headline read, “Sheriff’s wife finds body.” Mesmerized, he continued to read. “Skeletal remains were discovered today by Theo Abernathy. Mrs. Abernathy said she was looking for wildflowers in McMahon Park when she saw bones protruding from the ground. The bones have been sent to the state laboratory for testing and identification. No other details were available at this time.”

Tony reached for the envelope. This time, he held it by only the very edge. The postmark was Cincinnati, Ohio, and mailed only two days earlier.

“Ruth Ann! Wade!” Tony bellowed, not wanting to take the time to use the intercom.

Ruth Ann, his secretary, arrived first. Her desk sat opposite his interior door. Her dark eyes were wide. A tissue adhered to her wet fingernail polish.

Deputy Wade Claybough crashed into her back and spun into the hallway. Straightening, he gathered his dignity, and when he walked in, only the flush on his high cheekbones betrayed his embarrassment.

If Tony had been in a better mood, the scene might have entertained him. He loved the Marx brothers. Instead, he glared at them both and reached into his desk drawer and retrieved three evidence bags. He left the pair standing at attention while he slipped the note, the newspaper clipping and the envelope into separate evidence bags.

“Tell me about this envelope.” Tony held the bag out to Ruth Ann.

Ignoring the flapping tissue dangling from her half-lavender fingernail, Ruth Ann took the bag. She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “It arrived in the mail this morning, along with all the rest.” She handed it back. “I never open your personal mail.”

Taking it back, he passed it to Wade. “I need you to do your fingerprint magic on this envelope and these.” Tony added the rest.

The block letters were easy to read. Ruth Ann’s eyes widened as she read the note. “More? As in more bodies?” If her skin weren’t so dark, a shade she referred to as Godiva dark chocolate, she’d look like a ghost.

The flush left Wade’s cheeks. “I doubt I’ll find anything but your prints, Ruth Ann’s and Fred the mailman’s. I’ll get right on it.”

“Ruth Ann,” said Tony. “I want you to stir up the state lab. They’ve had our bones for about three months now. I know they would have called if they made an identification, but I want to know what they do know.”

Watching the pair of them charge off to their tasks, Tony settled back onto his chair and reached for the jumbo jar of antacid tablets he kept on his desk. He pulled a well-worn road atlas from the bottom of a stack of papers on the floor.

At just over three hundred miles from Silersville to Cincinnati, it would be an easy enough drive, mostly interstate highway. Someone could make it round trip in a day. He rubbed his bald head and tried to ease some of the rapidly building tension from his shoulders.

He wanted to march down to the office of the
Silersville Gazette
and ask to see a list of out-of-town subscribers. Only knowing Winifred Thornby, the cantankerous editor, would turn his question into a front-page story stopped him.

Lots of people in the area had relatives in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky. The out-of-state subscriber list was probably longer than the list of locals in their tiny county.

His desk phone rang, startling him. He reached for the receiver and pressed it to his ear. “Sheriff.”

The high-pitched whine pouring through the earpiece sounded like some kind of siren wailing. He jerked upright in his chair. A second later, he realized a woman was crying into his ear. He felt more like joining in than asking the problem. He’d heard the same sound too many times not to recognize it.

“What’s the problem, Blossom?” Tony eased the receiver away from his ear and held it about two inches from his head. With his free hand, he began sorting the rest of his mail. If Blossom held true to form, the conversation would continue for a while before she got to the point.

“That devil woman messed up my yard.” The whine rose another octave.

“What woman?” Tony tossed several pieces of junk mail in the direction of the trash can. One went in.

“You know who I mean. Queen Doreen, the mayor’s wife.”

Tony had no trouble visualizing the mayor’s wife. The petite woman could freeze anyone with a single haughty glance. Tony tried to visualize Blossom’s yard and failed. Only the image of Blossom herself came to mind. An extremely large woman, she loved to dress in bright colors even though they clashed vividly with her impossibly orange hair. Tony enjoyed knowing her hair was nearly as thin as his own. He guessed her age at somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.

“What did Doreen do?”

“She stole my little donkey and cart planter.” The whine eased a bit. “And she dumped the petunias out on the grass.”

Ah, now he could see the yard in his mind. Blossom and the rest of the Flowers clan enjoyed the liberal use of plaster figurines in their landscaping. The particular planter in question sat close to the road and leaned against the pole supporting the mail box. The paint job was reckless at best. As Tony recalled, the donkey itself had three neon green eyes, a trait he believed to be very unusual in the donkey family. Not only was the thing hideous, it also had to weigh almost as much as Queen Doreen. She was not a large woman.

“How do you know she took it?” Tony’s gaze wandered over the piles of papers stacked on his desk and thought he really ought to do something about the mess. Instead, he rummaged in his top desk drawer and found the extra staples and proceeded to refill his stapler. “Did you see her do it?”

Silence, broken only by the sounds of something being chewed, was her response. After a bit more smacking, she answered, “Not exactly, but . . .”

The image of a cow chewing a cud sprang into Tony’s mind. “But?” He rested his elbow on the nearest stack of papers and leaned his forehead against his fist.

“Who else woulda taken it? I heard her threaten to have Marmot-the-Varmint pick it up with the rest of the trash.” Her dissertation was punctuated by juicy-sounding hiccups. “It’s none of her business what I put in my yard. Even if she is married to old Calvin. Bein’ the mayor’s wife don’t make her God, you know.”

Tony wanted to bang his head on the desk or the receiver. How had he ever let his wife talk him into moving back here once they had escaped? Silersville in general and the job of Park County Sheriff, specifically, were turning him into an old man, and he wasn’t even forty yet. “Okay, Blossom. I’ll have someone check into it.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.” Her voice took on a tone of incredible sweetness. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

Tony knew the drill. If he sent Sheila or another deputy by her house, Blossom would still have some excuse why she had to talk to Tony in person. Not in his wildest dreams had he ever imagined he would have a groupie, at least not in his capacity of sheriff. Occasionally, he let his errant thoughts tempt him with fame as a noted author, celebrated for his bestselling novel of the Old West. As yet he hadn’t finished it, much less achieved kudos.