Murders on Elderberry Road: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery (8 page)

“Mary, if I have offended you, I’m so sorry.”

“Of course you haven’t offended me, Po. But taking care of our house, our properties and charities, our store — well, that’s my life now. And I will do the best I can to make Owen proud.” Mary turned and walked out the front door. Po stood at the door and watched Mary walk down the porch steps and along the brick sidewalk to the street. Her sleek, elegant car was waiting at the curb. Po watched her slide behind the wheel, then drive slowly off to Windsor House and a day of selling extravagantly priced artifacts to people who didn’t need them.

Po frowned. She brushed her hair back behind one ear, her hands on her hips, and shook her head. “Lord,” she wondered aloud, “what in heaven’s name was that all about?”

Early the next Saturday, Selma unlocked the door to her quilt shop and ushered the Queen Bees into the back room. A collective sigh of relief hung heavy on the early morning air.

“A giant dose of normal — that’s what we need,” Phoebe said. She walked over to the far end of the eight-foot table, the spot where she always sat, and dropped her bag to the floor.

“I don’t know if we’ve actually reached normal yet,” Selma said. “But by gum we’ll be there soon.”

“Of course we will,” Po said, and settled down at the end of the table. “So let’s talk anniversary quilt. This is the day we start in earnest.”

“I think Susan and I have it figured out,” Leah said. “Tell me what you think.” She walked over to the table and held up a diagram — a large page filled with tiny squares.

“This is our version of an old pattern called the Crystal Star. Perfect for Selma, don’t you think?” She looked over at Selma.

They all agreed that a star would be good. Even Kate, who expressed great fear that she’d have to master points, thought it was a great idea. “A star for our star,” she said, and smiled at Selma.

“The Crystal Star pattern,” Susan went on, “was printed in
The Kansas City Star
in the 1930s. It was part of the series they did for all those years, reprinting quilt patterns that people sent in from Nebraska and Kansas and Oklahoma — from the whole center of the country.”

“My mother collected every one of those,” Eleanor said. “They were a history book in the making.”

Po nodded. Her mother collected them, too, then passed them down to Po. She looked over at the diagram. “How will we divide this up?” she asked.

“The quilt will be five blocks square, with several blocks reserved for a special center star, so we’ll each have to make at least two. Then the fastest among us can do the remaining ones. We’ll set the center star on point and give it its own frame. It will be special, a focal point. If you look at this diagram you can see that it becomes a star within a star, and will take up five blocks. Maybe Susan and I can work on the center while the rest of you do the border stars.”

“Will all our stars be the same?” Phoebe asked. Phoebe loved experimenting, no matter what the outcome.

“You can make it as special as you want by changing the center of your star. For example, the middle could be a checkerboard pattern, a diamond, or plain. A small pinwheel would work, too. Live dangerously, Pheebs.”

“I have some fabric we can start with,” Susan said. “Leah and I picked out these three fabrics for the common colors, based on the color scheme we all agreed on last month. We’ll each use these three in our stars in some way. Then everyone can pick coordinating fabrics and work those into their own design.” She picked up a purple cotton print. “This will be the common background for all the stars. What do you think?”

“This will be beautiful, Leah,” Kate said. “Even with me working on it!”

Selma had gone to the front of the store to wait on a customer. “Frankly, I can’t imagine a better time to do this, nor a better person to do it for,” Kate said.

The others joined in, excited to get started and eager to honor Selma and Parker’s Dry Goods’ fiftieth anniversary in this way.

Susan passed out copies of the pattern and piled the table with bolts of fabric in deep shades of blue and purple, pale-yellow prints, blue-black stripes, and lavender and gold. Maggie fingered a deep purple fabric with stripes of black and yellow swirling through it. “It will be a magnificent quilt,” she pronounced, and the anniversary project began.

“What’s the latest news, Selma?” Kate asked as Selma came back into the room. She reached for a mat and rotary cutter.

Selma rolled her sewing table up to the edge of the work-table and flicked the on switch. The gentle hum of the machine filled the room. “Well, the police have stopped hanging out in my store, which is a good thing. It’s not exactly a welcoming, come-hither sight for my customers, what with P.J. in his crisp blue uniform standing guard at the front door.”

“P.J. Flanigan?” Kate asked.

“The one and only,” Maggie said, and winked at Kate.

“I went to high school with him,” Kate explained to the others. “I thought P.J. went into law.”

“He did,” Phoebe spoke up. “He was in law school with Jimmy. Everyone knew P.J. He’s one tall piece of man candy!” Her laughter spun up to the skylight.

“Well, I won’t argue with that,” Kate grinned mischievously.

“P.J Flanigan is a great guy,” Po said. “His parents are dear friends of mine. After law school, P.J. switched to police work, following in his father’s footsteps. I suspect he’ll go back to law some day.” She looked over at Kate. “And if I remember correctly, Kate Margaret Simpson, high school wasn’t the only place you went with P.J.”

Kate snorted. “A lifetime ago, Po. But P.J. and I had a lot of fun, I must admit.”

“He brings his two Aussies to me. And you can tell a master by his dogs, you know,” Maggie said. “Kanga and Mocha are the sweetest girls in town.”

Po grinned and said, “Kate, you know your mother and I used to place bets on the comings and goings of P.J. Flanigan — when you two would break up and when you’d make-up. We’d sit on my back porch sipping very dry martinis, always with a thin slice of apple floating on top, and wait for the next soap opera chapter to play itself out.”

“Kate — a side of you I didn’t know!” Phoebe lifted her eyebrows. “P.J. Flanigan, not bad. Were you part of the in crowd, Katie? I imagine P.J. was quite the hot shot.”

Kate made a face and Po laughed, remembering the Kate of a dozen or more years ago. Kate had been her own person even back then, and she wasn’t in the popular group — not by a long shot — though she had had plenty of friends. She’d been a wild, beautiful filly, a thorn in her mother’s side much of the time, opinionated, stubborn, but underneath it all, a courageous, sweet soul. Po and Meg were almost always proud of Kate, even while they worried about her and wondered what she’d do next to disrupt their peaceful lives.

“P.J. was a hot shot, I guess,” Kate admitted. “He played every sport known to man. Me? Well, my best friend Honora liked me. And P.J. did, too. But sorry to disappoint you, Pheebs. You won’t find me on the Prom Queen page in the Crestwood High yearbook.”

“Speaking of P.J.,” Eleanor said, “what does he think about this awful murder business, Selma?”

Selma shook her head. “He said they’re still thinking it was a burglary. The ‘perp,’ as P.J. calls the scum bum who did this, assumed the store would be empty that late at night.”

“So what did this guy steal — a bolt of fabric?” Phoebe asked. “That’ll provide a great Sun City retirement.”

“Now that’s a good question, Phoebe,” Selma said. “Whoever this person was, he wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. He took my locked box from under the counter up front. And walked off with a sum total of half a dozen hand-written store charges, some change, and a stack of order sheets I had planned to finish that day. And Owen’s wallet and watch, I believe I heard P.J. say.”

“Owen died for loose change,” Leah said. There was an edge to her usually soft voice. She lined up her cut strips of fabric on the table and smoothed them out with her fingers. “Owen was a good man, a decent man. This whole thing just doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t make any sense at all. And I think P.J. Flanigan, as intelligent as he is, is dead wrong,” Po said. She blurted the words out with more force than she had intended and was slightly embarrassed when all eyes in the room turned toward her.

Susan, her arms carrying a bolt of fabric, walked through the arch that opened the meeting room to the front section of the store. The silence stopped her in her tracks. “What?” she asked, looking from one surprised face to the next. “What’s wrong?”

“Po doesn’t think a burglar killed Owen Hill,” Phoebe said.

Susan dropped the bolt of cotton and stared at Po. “What are you saying, Po? Of course it’s a burglary.”

“I don’t think any burglar worthy of the name would attempt to rob Selma’s store. You’ve all said the same thing in some shape or form, and that’s all that I’m saying. I don’t think it makes sense. Not with a busy bookstore down the street, and an antique shop with lamps that cost more than my home. So there, that’s it. That’s what I think.”

“But,” Susan rested both hands on the back of the ladder chair and steadied herself. “Do you think someone wanted Professor Hill dead?”

Po wished she hadn’t started the conversation. Susan was a sensitive woman and had her own bundle of worries — caring for an ill mother, going back to college at the age of 38, and working as hard as she did to make ends meet. She had also been on edge lately. Po shouldn’t have burdened her with another fear beyond her control. “I don’t mean to stir things up. Perhaps I spoke out of turn.”

“You, Po?” Kate said, her voice lifting at the end of the question, and they all laughed at the affectionate jibe. The tension lifted.

Po shushed Kate with a wave of her hand, but she laughed along with the rest of the Queen Bees. It was true that she sometimes found it difficult to hold her tongue when strong emotion gripped her. And she felt strongly about this issue, mostly because she didn’t want her dear friend Selma in any danger. And if someone killed Owen in Selma’s store for reasons other than theft, then danger might still lurk there in the jumble of fabric bolts and sewing notions. Po wanted the danger faced, and then erased.

“Well, frankly, it doesn’t make sense to me either, Po.” Selma picked up a metal can filled with straight pins and handed it to Phoebe who was pinning a strip of bright green polka dot fabric to a lush lavender print. Her star matched her personality to a T, Po had commented earlier — bright, daring, and sparkling.

Selma went on. “I for one could have killed Owen a time or two — of late, he’d been pushing for that fancy brick sidewalk, in spite of my very vocal protests — but I didn’t. That’s not to say, though, that he might have pushed others far enough that they did.”

“There’s a lot of gossip brewing around town,” Phoebe said. “Even at the park where I take Jude and Emma. Greta Janssen — she has a two-year-old and goes to Reverend Gottrey’s church — she said that she thought the Reverend was having a hard time looking sad about the whole thing. Owen Hill was about to pull the plug on the endless donations he and Mary made to the church.” She pulled a small ironing board up to the other end of the table and plugged in the iron.

Maggie joined in. “Hans Broker, he lives just a street over.” Maggie pointed with her head toward the back window and the large comfortable homes that lay beyond the thick border of bushes. “He had his lab, Sparky, in for shots last week, and he said there’d been activity in this alley on and off for awhile now. Night noises when there shouldn’t have been. I guess Sparky barked like crazy a few nights, according to Hans, and then finally got used to it.”

“So he heard something on the night Owen died?” Kate asked.

“Well, that’s where his story lost a little ground. He wasn’t sure about that, and yet it was so warm that night that he must have had his windows open. Everyone did.”

Po stood and held a piece of royal purple cotton up to the natural light. It would be perfect for one of her stars. She set it down next to her coffee cup, pleased. “I don’t mean to put a damper on Hans’ story,” she said, focusing back on the conversation. “Hans is a sweet man, but he wears two hearing aids. And at that time of night both of them were probably on his bedside table, right beside his empty glass of Jack Daniels. Now Sparky is credible, but there are a thousand squirrels that live back there, not to mention the beautiful black cat that I ran into that awful morning.” Po sat down and fingered the fabric in front of her.

“Those night-time noises could have been made by Wesley Peet,” Selma said.

“The security guard?” Kate asked. She sat down at Selma’s machine and pushed the pedal, stitching together the small rectangles and squares that would be her flying geese — the rays of her star. “He’s one creepy dude. He skulks around in the shadows and rarely speaks. Honestly, he scares me, Selma.”

“He’s frightening,” Susan agreed. She had slipped into a chair and was helping Eleanor line up her fabric against a paper template. Eleanor had decided to paper piece, insisting that the points of her star would be absolutely perfect. “Wesley is usually around when I’m closing up.” She held the template and fabric up to the light to make sure the alignment was perfect. Her unfinished thought hung there in the air awkwardly.