Murders on Elderberry Road: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery (16 page)

By Saturday, everyone in Crestwood, Kansas, knew about the hit-and-run attempt to kill Max Elliott. And according to the Saturday paper, it could still be a case of murder. Max Elliott was in a coma and his condition grave. The mood in the back of Selma’s store when the Queen Bees began to gather was somber.

“It was an old pickup truck,” Maggie said.

“And how many thousands of those will you find around here?” Eleanor asked.

“I’ve got one,” Maggie raised her hand.

“Exactly,” Kate said. “There are zillions. P.J. said it’s going to take a stroke of luck to move this forward.

“But isn’t there a witness?” Maggie asked.

“Yes, but he was loaded,” Kate said. “An older man who had just come out of a bar around the corner and probably wouldn’t have seen anything except the pick-up came out of nowhere and nearly ran him down. The guy fell back on the curb and sat up just in time to see the truck slam into Max. At first the guy thought the truck was stopping, an honest accident, but then it sped off.”

Susan had walked in while they were talking and shivered as she heard the description. She ran her hands up and down her bare arms. “Max wouldn’t hurt a flea. This is so awful.”

Po watched the lines of worry and fear flit across Susan’s face. For a minute, it looked like Susan was going to say something, but then her eyes blinked and she looked away.

“We need action.” Phoebe had come in the front door and stood in the archway, hands on her hips.

“Phoebe, where are you going — a Harley rally?” Maggie asked.

Phoebe was dressed completely in black — tight jeans and turtleneck, a black cap that nearly covered her shorn hair, and high top tennis shoes. Po thought she looked like a little black cat.

“I think it’s time we got organized,” Phoebe said. “This is definitely too close to home. We need to get the person who did this and put an end to it all, once and for all. And if you believe there isn’t a connection between what happened last night and Owen Hill’s murder, then you don’t watch enough ‘Law and Order’ reruns.”

Kate nodded. “They’re looking for a connection between the two; Phoebe’s right.”

“I can’t imagine anyone in this whole world who would want to kill Owen and Max,” Leah said. She’d already pieced all her stars and was cutting the pieces for the backing — one huge star that matched the smaller ones on the front.

“Poor Mary,” Maggie said. “First her husband, then his best friend. I wonder how she’s holding up.”

“She looks frail,” Eleanor said. “Instead of getting stronger, she’s wilting like a pansy in July.”

“I saw her and Max Thursday,” Kate said. “They were outside Daisy’s shop. I started to say hello, but Mary was very upset. Dear sweet Max had his arm around her, comforting her.”

“I think her church has rallied around her, too,” Po said. “I invited her to a couple of upcoming events, but the Reverend and his wife beat me to it. They’ve booked most of her evenings.”

“Hah!” Eleanor snorted. “Of course they have. With Owen gone, they have direct access to the Hill fortune.”

“Eleanor, that’s harsh,” Po said. “And Mary is a business woman. She’s not about to give all her money away indiscriminately.”

“Po, sometimes you’re too blasted diplomatic for your own good. Face it, without Owen to temper the gifts to the church, Reverend Gottrey will take off like a racehorse, wooing Mary for all she’s worth.”

“Which is a lot,” Po conceded. “But the donations are for a good cause, and it’s Mary’s money now to do with as she wishes.”

“Reverend Gottrey made Mary an elder of the church last week. And the Hill name will be on so many plaques that they’ll be able to build a barn out of them,” Eleanor said.

Phoebe sided with her. “Eleanor, not only are you getting very good at sewing corners that meet in the right place, you’re sensible. You may be on to something. It seems to me this investigation is moving at a snail’s pace — they should have this man in jail by now, before someone else gets killed. Maybe we can help speed it up.”

“I for one will do anything I can to help Selma,” Maggie said. “If that means snooping around or gathering information, I’m in, but I refuse to wear a black cat suit.”

“But Mags, you’d look so cute,” Kate teased.

Maggie laughed and got up to press out her seams before sewing on the next piece.

Po stood at the end of the table and watched a dozen fingers pinning bright star points together, pressing seams, carefully lining up fabric on green cutting mats. Lips were pursed, eyes focused, and throughout it all, bits of conversation were woven into the process effortlessly.

She thought about what Phoebe said. Similar thoughts had spun around inside her head in the early hours of the morning when sleep had totally abandoned her. Who did this awful thing? And were they all in danger now — the quilters, the shopkeepers, neighbors? Their safe, small world had been disrupted. It was etched in the deep lines in Selma’s face, the fear that Susan carried on her sleeve, the sleeplessness and suspicions. She could even detect it in the loose chatter of Maggie and Kate, who tried to be affirming and positive.

“We all need to be careful, that much is for sure,” Po said, more to herself than to the group. If they could string some thoughts together that made sense and speed things up, what harm would be done? She walked over to the sideboard and poured herself a cup of coffee, her gaze shifting from the quilters to the alley outside the window. It was difficult to believe that it was two weeks ago today that she had stumbled upon Owen’s body in that alley. Did someone surprise him? Or was it someone he knew?

Po turned away from the window. “I think we need to approach this like a new quilt,” she said. “But we need to think outside the single squares and think about the bigger pattern.”

Phoebe looked up, her eyes lit with excitement. “And just like we do with our pieces of fabric: We take the whole big piece and cut it into little pieces, then put it back together in lots of different ways.”

“Okay, ladies,” Eleanor said, her rotary cutter held high in the air, “let’s cut!”

“—to the chase,” Phoebe added.

In short order, the Queen Bees had gone over everything they knew, beginning with the night of Owen’s murder and ending with Max’s hit-and-run. How such momentous events — the shifting and changing forever of lives — could be packed into a brief summary was thought provoking to Po. She wanted to gather her three children close and embrace them tightly.

“All right,” she said. “Where do we go from here? Any suggestions?”

“I think we should have little assignments,” Phoebe said.

“We could do it loosely, maybe,” Maggie said. “I’ll listen carefully to what my clients say.”

“And I can keep track of the college talk,” Leah added.

“I seem to spend a great deal of time in these shops. I’ll talk to Gus and Ambrose,” Po said.

“And Daisy?” Leah asked, knowing approaching Daisy Sample could be dangerous to your health, if not done with great delicacy.

Po laughed. “Daisy doesn’t frighten me. In fact, I kind of like her. She has chutzpah.”

“And Kate, you keep close track of P.J.,” Maggie said with a suggestive smile. “That way we get news from the horse’s mouth.”

“And Selma and Susan are here in the middle of the tempest,” Kate said, ignoring Maggie’s innuendoes. “So they can gather on-the-spot news.”

“We keep our ears open, our eyes focused,” Leah said, summing it up.

“Yes, that’s it in a nutshell. So Bees,” Phoebe said, rising from her chair and punching the air with her fists. “Let’s sleuth!”

Po sat at her computer in the late-Saturday afternoon light, the stories of strong women parading across her mind like frames of a movie. She had run a half-dozen quick errands after leaving the quilting group, keeping her ears and eyes open as instructed, then headed home to get in a couple of hours at the computer, moving her book along to the next moment in history. She was going from one group of strong women to another, she thought, replaying the morning’s quilting session in her mind. Each of the Queen Bees wanted so desperately to help bring order and peace back to Selma’s life. The sleuthing may not amount to anything, but at least it made them all feel useful.

Po focused on the screen and began to read what she’d most recently written. Strong women everywhere, she thought. The writing had flowed and the stories seemed to pour out on top of one another. And tied into the story of each of these brave women was their passion for quilting and the fierce bonds they forged as they sat in soft, comfortable silence, creating designs that would be passed down for generations.

The stories were vital to Po — whether they were myths, as some thought, or not — and she cherished the idea of women hanging Jacob’s Ladder quilts on clothes lines as a message to runaway slaves. The black square in the center said, “You’re safe here — come in.” She thought of women in wartime, left at home to work in factories, keeping their families safe and fed. They gathered scraps of firecracker red, strips of white and blue, and wove them into patriotic quilts that they raffled off to collect money for the war effort.

Po wrote for a while, until her shoulders began to sag and the small space in her lower back cried for movement. Hoover cried for movement, too, his patience as frayed as his floppy tail.

“Okay, pal,” Po said. “It’s almost dark, but let’s go for a romp.”

Wrapped in a fuzzy red jacket and pulling a cap over her ears, Po set out for the Elderberry shops. As long as she was out, she’d pick up some bread for tomorrow’s supper, too, if Marla had any left. The stores closed at six on Saturday nights, but the closing time wasn’t written in stone. The hours became as unpredictable as the owners and she suspected she’d find something still open, even though the hour hand on the mantle clock had edged past six.

The decorative gaslights that lit Elderberry Road were already on by the time Hoover and Po turned down the street. The sky ahead of her still held a trace of sunlight, but behind it was already night. Though the air was still tinged with autumn, the winter smells were there, too. Po could feel them. And in her mind’s eye she saw the diamond flakes drifting down silently around the gaslights, white piles forming on the heavy black bases. A scene straight out of Currier and Ives.

Just as she reached Marla’s, the lights flickered, then went out. A faceless hand flipped the window sign to “Closed,” and behind the thin curtain, Po could see Marla shuffling off toward the back of the bakery. No matter. She could pick up the bread tomorrow when she and Leah met for breakfast.

She and Hoover had the block to themselves and they walked on down the row of shops. As they passed the Flowers by Daisy shop, Po noticed that Daisy had increased her bed of plastic flowers — probably out of spite, she thought — and further down, Gus had a new display of books in the window. “Banned books,” the sign read, and beneath it was a delightful display of some of Po’s favorite masterpieces. She stopped and peered through the glass, reading each title carefully, catching herself tsking out loud now and then at such folly.
Catcher in the Rye, Gone with the Wind, The Twelfth Night, Tom Sawyer, The Origin of the Species.
And, oh, my, one she hadn’t known about before: a 1989 school ban on
Little Red Riding Hood.
Good for Gus. Raising awareness was never a bad thing. And it was certainly something they were all being called to do these recent days.

A shadow fell across the sidewalk behind her and she glanced back to see who was coming. It was Wesley Peet, swinging a lit flashlight, his gait unsteady. Hoover growled and his ears shot up.

Po grabbed his leash and whispered soothing, quieting words, her eyes not leaving the brawny shadow behind the flashlight. The light cast eerie, jagged streaks across the sidewalk.

Suddenly the beam of light changed direction. Instead of continuing on toward her, Wesley turned down the narrow alley between Daisy’s and the Brew and Brie and disappeared.

Po wasn’t even sure he had seen her. She shivered. Suddenly the night was darker, the air sharper, and winter seemed far closer than it had earlier in the day. She remembered what someone had said recently about Owen, that he was about to fire Wesley. At the time, it hadn’t seemed important. Now, everything seemed more sinister and ominous. Could Wesley have killed Owen out of anger? Fear of being fired? She pulled up the collar of her jacket, coaxed Hoover away from the fire hydrant, and walked quickly down the street. Maybe Selma was still in the shop, doing paperwork and straightening bolts of fabric. Po could pick up a blade for her rotary cutter so that she could cut the rest of the pieces for her star tomorrow. And she’d calm down a bit, too, before she headed home.