Quilt Trip: A Southern Quilting Mystery (13 page)

Winnie said, “I can’t sleep in there! There’s no way I can fall asleep now!”

Posy gently suggested, “Why don’t you join us all in the library, Winnie? We can light the small fire again. Grab your pillow and a couple of quilts and settle down in front of the fire. There’s safety in numbers, anyway.”

“I guess I might as well,” said Winnie. “I don’t think I’ll sleep a wink, though.”

While Winnie got her quilts and pillow, Beatrice lit another small fire in the library. Winnie set up her bedding with much ado, complaining about the situation they were in, the hardness of the floor, and the fact that they were trapped in a haunted house. Beatrice had the feeling they were going to be subjected to hours of sleeplessness with Winnie’s tossing and turning and muttering, but was amazed that Winnie fell instantly asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.

“Well, that’s a gift,” murmured Meadow, staring in amazement in the dim firelight at Winnie, who was now snoring gently.

“As long as it’s not because she’s been given sleeping pills,” said Beatrice with a sigh. She lay down and soon fell blessedly back to sleep herself.

The next morning, Beatrice was awakened by Miss Sissy, who stuck her head in the library, hissed, “Wickedness!,” and then abruptly disappeared again.

Beatrice sighed. She had a feeling that Miss Sissy was getting lonely with her self-imposed solitude and was reaching out in her odd way. Everyone else was still sleeping, so she decided to join the old woman in the kitchen for a snack—that, almost certainly, was where Miss Sissy would be heading.

Miss Sissy was already opening up a can of white potatoes when Beatrice entered the kitchen. The old woman glared at Beatrice and held the can closer to her. “I’m not that hungry, Miss Sissy. You’re welcome to the potatoes.” Beatrice surveyed the pantry, by now quite picked over, and wondered whether she could stomach a breakfast of olives.

She discovered a small can of beets in the back of the pantry and pulled it out instead. “I hope the weather changes fast,” she said to Miss Sissy. “Otherwise, our diet is only going to get even weirder.”

Miss Sissy greedily ate a potato and nodded. “Blue sky out there,” she said, pointing vaguely to the window.

Beatrice glanced out. “Well, that’s a good sign. Maybe the sun will help to melt some of the ice.”

Miss Sissy said, very reasonably, “Driveway is in the shade, though.”

Yes, that wooded driveway was going to be an issue. Beatrice was starting to wonder if they were ever going to get out of there.

She remembered that she was planning on asking Miss Sissy questions and now appeared to be a very good time, since the old woman seemed to be fairly lucid. Beatrice munched delicately on a canned beet, then began her questioning. “Miss Sissy, I know you have a hard time sleeping. What kinds of things have you seen and heard at night lately? Have you seen people walking around? Heard any strange noises? Seen any ghosts?” She smiled at her.

“Ghosts!” snorted Miss Sissy. “No such thing.” She cackled to herself.

Beatrice figured if anyone was likely to see a ghost, it would be Miss Sissy while wandering though the huge house all night. “Okay, so no ghost. What about people? Who have you seen while you’ve been up?”

Miss Sissy grunted and stared imploringly at Beatrice’s beets. Beatrice carefully fished one out with a knife and put it on Miss Sissy’s plate, where it was quickly gobbled up.

Miss Sissy sighed contentedly and glanced up at Beatrice. “Saw that younger gal.”

Everyone was a gal to Miss Sissy, who many days appeared to be staring one hundred in the eye. Beatrice’s mind whirled as she tried to imagine who Miss Sissy would consider young. “Holly?”

Miss Sissy nodded. “She wanders around at night.”

“Wanders around? Does she sleepwalk or something?”

Miss Sissy said scornfully, “Not her. She’s awake. Being snoopy.”

“What makes you think she’s being snoopy?”

“Goes through desks and anyplace there are papers. Goes into closets and every room. Poking around.”

Beatrice sat back in her chair in surprise. It didn’t gel with her impression of Holly at all. “Have you gotten any idea what she’s searching for or doing? Has she seen you or talked to you while she’s up at night?”

Miss Sissy shook her head and more wiry hairs tumbled out of her poorly constructed bun. “I’ve seen her, but she hasn’t seen me.” The old woman looked pleased at this.

“What do
you
think she’s hunting for?”

“Secrets!” hissed Miss Sissy, staring scornfully at Beatrice.

Beatrice was happy it all made such good sense to Miss Sissy, but she really didn’t have a clue why Holly would be looking around for secrets or anything else. Miss Sissy was starting to look irritated, so Beatrice needed to back off before she shut up for good.

“So you’ve seen Holly at night. Who else have you seen while you’ve been up?”

“That mean gal. She’s up at night. Yelled at me, too.” Miss Sissy’s expression was vicious.

“Who is that?” Beatrice asked with a frown.

“The
mean
one!” Miss Sissy bellowed, as if Beatrice were hard of hearing.

“You mean Alexandra?”

“If she’s the one who’s so mean. She’s snoopy, too. Checks the same spots that the young gal does. She hollers at me when she sees me watching her.” Miss Sissy’s catlike eyes glowered.

It could be that Alexandra was hunting around for a will. Beatrice had a feeling that, if she found one that wasn’t in her favor, she’d have no problem destroying it.

“She’s all the time talking about a key, too,” said Miss Sissy.

“A key? Key to what?”

“Don’t know. Won’t tell. Wickedness!”

Having grown up in the house, Alexandra likely knew where all her mother’s hiding spots would be. “I’m thinking I should take a tour of this house,” mused Beatrice.

“You’ve seen it,” said Miss Sissy with a shrug of a cadaverous shoulder.

“Not really. Nothing except the main downstairs rooms. I did check out the bedrooms really well, but that was only because we were searching for that gun. Now I think I should investigate the attic. There’s a turret room up there, too.”

Miss Sissy glared at her apparent ignorance.

“I’ve been hearing all this stuff about people searching for things and wills and missing sleeping pills and ghosts,” said Beatrice. “It would be good to have a better understanding of the entire layout of the house.”

Miss Sissy continued glaring at her.

“Who knows,” said Beatrice lightly. “There might even be food up there. Some people stockpile food for emergencies, you know.”

Suddenly Miss Sissy was a lot more interested. Beatrice wondered whether she might leap up and start for the attic herself. She quickly added, “So you saw Holly and Alexandra about. Was there anyone else, Miss Sissy? Any of the others?”

“Not Posy!” said Miss Sissy, viciously. She apparently thought that Beatrice might be suspicious of her dearest friend.

“Of course not. Nor Meadow or me. But none of us are really going to be suspects with the police, since we didn’t know these folks. You didn’t see Dot or Winnie walking around at all?” Beatrice was starting to think that everyone had a secret life in the middle of the night here.

“Seen both of them!” muttered Miss Sissy. “Evil! Wicked! Liars!”

Beatrice raised her eyebrows. Miss Sissy was going downhill fast. “Nothing specific you want to tell me about them? Were they doing anything?”

Miss Sissy stared blankly at her.

“Okay, well, I’ve kept you long enough, Miss Sissy. I should be cleaning up my breakfast things. Want me to clean yours, too, while I’m at it?”

“I’ve seen my friend, too,” Miss Sissy whispered, looking vague.

Beatrice stared at her. “Your friend? Who is your friend?”

“It’s
my
friend, isn’t it? Not yours! Won’t tell,” Miss Sissy said stubbornly, banging an arthritic fist on the wooden kitchen table.

Meadow joined Beatrice in the kitchen after Miss Sissy had stomped out. “Well, you got up awfully early this morning for someone who was up in the middle of the night with a ghost.”

“Miss Sissy and I were having a visit, that’s all,” said Beatrice, rinsing off the plates.

“How did
that
go?” asked Meadow. “You never know what you’re going to get with Miss Sissy.”

“It started off well, and then deteriorated after that.” Beatrice placed the plates in the dish drainer.

“This is going to be interesting,” mused Meadow. “Stuck in the house with a completely crazy Miss Sissy.”

“Winnie is another one in danger of cracking up,” said Beatrice quietly. “She was better when she was quilting yesterday, but the stress still must be too much for her. What did you think of her ghost story last night?”

“I thought she must have been having a real lulu of a nightmare,” said Meadow. “Or that maybe she’d gotten into the wine.”

“But she was up walking around,” said Beatrice. “So a nightmare doesn’t fit.”

“She could have been sleepwalking. People do. Especially when they’re really stressed out.”

Beatrice shook her head slowly. “She struck me as being completely awake and alert when I saw her last night. She was hysterical—but not sleeping.”

“She might not have been sleeping then, but for the last few hours she’d been sleeping pretty hard,” said Meadow. “Maybe now would be a good time for you to talk to her. Before she has a chance to get all hysterical on us again.”

“Is Winnie awake now?”

“She was just stirring when I left the library. You could bring her breakfast,” said Meadow. She opened the pantry door and peered inside. “Maybe a nice meal of . . . canned salmon. It’s the fanciest thing we have left and I think it would make a nice gesture for you to offer it to Winnie. She’d probably really appreciate it.”

“I can’t believe Miss Sissy didn’t devour it already. I strongly believe the whole reason Miss Sissy is up so much in the middle of the night is because she’s plundering the pantry.”

Meadow said smugly, “Ah. But I hid the canned salmon behind the tin of sardines. Miss Sissy hates sardines.”

Winnie was indeed very grateful to have the last decent can of food in the house. In fact, she was so grateful that she was moved to tears. This distressed Beatrice more than any amount of ravings over ghosts. She was relieved to set upon a mission to find Winnie some tissues.

When she’d returned with tissues for Winnie, she was glad to see that the quilter had composed herself for the most part. It was a fragile recovery, though, and she seemed she could fall apart at any moment. Beatrice vowed to tread carefully. It would probably be better to start out with something safe—like Dot and Holly.

“Winnie, I was wondering if you could maybe give me a few insights into Dot and Holly,” Beatrice began. “I don’t really have the full picture for how they figure in.”

Winnie finished chewing a mouthful of fish and said, “I really don’t know Holly at all, Beatrice. I have no idea what her connection with Muriel was. She says she didn’t know Muriel, so I guess we’ll have to take her at her word. I had heard of her through the quilting world, though. I knew that she was a very accomplished quilter in a good guild.”

Beatrice sighed. “I guess we’ll just have to accept that, then.”

Winnie raised her carefully drawn-on eyebrows. “Muriel
was
trying to actually set up a foundation, you know. Why else would she have had her lawyer here? I think—yes, she was trying to kill two birds with one stone with others of us. But Holly was probably only here because of her quilting.”

“Can you tell me more about why Dot is here? I understand she did have a connection with Muriel. A quilting one, I’m guessing, since Dot doesn’t appear to run in the same circles as Muriel would have.”

Winnie giggled. “Dot is pretty blue collar and Muriel wouldn’t have been friends with her, no. But she would have been acquainted with Dot through her quilting guild. I don’t have money, but at least I’m educated. Dot was likely a high school dropout.”

Beatrice knit her brows. “So, if Dot wasn’t really in the position to have been friends with Muriel, then why did Muriel feel she owed her an apology? It seems she wouldn’t have known her well enough to have hurt her.”

Winnie said in surprise, “Didn’t you know? Dot worked for Muriel. She was one of her mill employees.”

Beatrice stared at Winnie. “She was an employee?”

“She sure was. A pretty important one, too. She was a manager over there. But when Muriel shut down the mill, Dot got laid off. And she’s never found anything as well paying since. Of course, she’s not qualified to get another job that’s going to pay as much, considering she doesn’t really have an education. I understand that she had a good standard of living before the mill closed and that her life was really impacted by it. She had to sell a lot of stuff. She even had to move.” Winnie said this a bit gleefully, appearing to rejoice in Dot’s misfortune.

“So this all happened while you and Muriel were still friends?”

“Mercy, no! Muriel and I haven’t been friends for decades. No, this was something I heard about through the quilting grapevine. Quilters were trying to help Dot out by cooking her casseroles and that kind of thing. That’s how I knew about it. It’s the kind of thing that would make one very vengeful, wouldn’t it?” Winnie’s eyes glinted maliciously.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Beatrice said mildly. “Getting laid off is a nasty part of life these days. I can’t imagine that Dot would hold the loss of a job against an employer.”

“It wasn’t only that. Dot felt a sense of entitlement. Apparently, she’d argued for a higher salary while she worked at the mill, but was told that she’d get more money along with the promotion she’d get when she became manager. Then she finally
became
manager—and Muriel sold the mill. So Dot apparently felt that she’d been cheated. She’d been working hard all those years at a dirt-cheap salary because she’d been promised this prize—a prize the company, and Muriel, knew would be denied her. Yes, she became manager—but only for a month.”

“I know I keep playing devil’s advocate, but I can’t see how that was Muriel’s fault.”

Winnie blinked at her. “Well, of course it was! The mill was her business.”

“But as owner she probably had no idea of the inner workings of the place, her employees, or anything else. She wouldn’t have been responsible for telling Dot that she wasn’t getting a raise until her promotion. She likely wouldn’t have been aware of any of it except for the sale of the mill.”

“She certainly
was
aware of it! Muriel Starnes knew everything that went on in that place. Everything. There wasn’t a whispered rumor she hadn’t heard. If someone so much as sneezed, she was aware of it. I’m sure that she was the one person responsible for keeping Dot at a low salary and lying to her about her prospects at the company.”

“Why would she have done such a thing, though? It doesn’t make any sense to me why Muriel would have been so determined not to give Dot a raise or to give her a heads-up that she might want to start hunting for a new job. Especially since they were in the same guild and knew each other socially.”

“They were only acquaintances in the guild,” Winnie explained, seeming bored with the conversation. “There was no feeling of real friendship there. And besides, Muriel brought frugality to a new level. She pinched pennies like crazy. It wasn’t because she needed the money—it’s just the kind of person she was. It made her feel clever, I think. And it made her feel smug that she had piles of money in her bank account.”

Now Winnie’s thin face flushed and Beatrice figured she was probably thinking about how Muriel had cheated her, too, in a way—keeping her from marrying a prospective suitor with means.

Beatrice remembered that there was one other thread to this mystery that she didn’t understand.

“Winnie, were you acquainted with Colton before you came here?”

“No. I knew who he was, but I’d never actually met him. Colton and Muriel got involved after Muriel and I had ended our friendship.”

“You knew who he was?” Beatrice frowned. “So you saw him with Muriel in town?”

“Well, they were married. I was aware of that, of course, even though Muriel and I weren’t talking to each other. The other quilters would gossip about Muriel.”

“Married!” Beatrice stared at Winnie.

“Didn’t you know?”

“No! I thought that perhaps they’d dated. Or maybe even that Colton had admired Muriel from a distance.”

“No, they were married, all right. But not for very long. Don’t take the fact that they were married too seriously, Beatrice. Muriel certainly didn’t take marriage seriously. She was married five times.”

Beatrice’s mind boggled at this. She’d had only one husband and had been widowed for ages.
Five
husbands?

“But I will say this—Colton was her last husband. Muriel never married again after that,” Winnie said.

“Do you think that Colton broke it off? Or Muriel?”

“Well, the gossip around the quilting guild was that Colton had actually broken it off. Oh, he was crazy about her—couldn’t you still see it? He was very deferential to her. But the other quilters said that he realized that her feelings for him weren’t the same as his for her. It broke his heart and he decided to end their marriage instead of living a lie.” Winnie snorted. “Very tragic.” Her voice was bitter again, as if she were thinking about her own failed relationship.

Beatrice hesitated, then said, “Winnie, tell me about the gun. And more about what you saw last night.”

Winnie tensed. “I hate guns, Beatrice. I’ve never had one in my house, nor wanted one, even though I’ve lived alone almost my entire life. They terrify me. When I tell you that I have no idea how that vile thing got into my room, it’s the truth.”

Beatrice was inclined to believe her. If she was acting, it was an excellent performance. “And what about last night?”

Winnie shuddered. “I’ve already told you about that. I hate to even think about it. I got up to visit the restroom. I felt a chilling draft sweep over me.” She stared at Beatrice. “Why would I feel a draft when there were no windows open?”

Beatrice shook her head.

“Then I had this sensation of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned and there was this swooshing, billowing form leaping out at me from near the hall window. I screamed.” She spread out her hands to indicate that Beatrice knew the rest of the story.

“And you were completely awake?” asked Beatrice, after clearing her throat.

Now Winnie’s eyes grew hard. “Is that what you think? You think I was dreaming? You’re one of those people who likes to deal in facts and numbers and data, aren’t you? Let me tell you, Beatrice, there are some things in life that we can’t understand. But they’re as real as you and me.”

“Oh, I know,” Beatrice said quickly. “Yes, I believe you.”

“Faith is real and we can’t see it. Evil is real and we can’t touch it. And this ghost was real, Beatrice. I can’t explain it or even describe it very well—but it was real.”

•   •   •

Beatrice thought again about the key that Miss Sissy had mentioned. Where hadn’t they looked in the house? There were several closets downstairs—coat closets and storage mainly—as well as a few upstairs, for linens and other storage. And none of them appeared to be locked.

The turret room and the attic—those were the two main unexplored areas. And considering how dark the house was, daytime would be the only time to explore, although the attic was bound to be fairly dark even then, despite the dormer windows Beatrice had spotted from outside the house.

She hated to use one of the precious few candles, but there was really no other way.

Meadow saw her lighting it. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Miss Sissy mentioned that Alexandra has been searching for a key at night. I figured I’d check to see if the attic or turret room was locked. If one of them is locked, I’ll spend some time poking around for a key,” Beatrice explained.

“You don’t think I’m going to let you go roaming around in the attic by yourself, do you! With a crazed killer around? No way. I’m coming with you. In fact, let’s get Posy to join us.”

“Won’t we draw a lot of attention to ourselves?” asked Beatrice. “I really don’t want the whole household up there.”

“Okay, so no Posy. You and me, Beatrice! A team.” Meadow beamed at her and Beatrice successfully repressed a heavy sigh. Still, Meadow was very energetic. Beatrice could probably use a little extra energy to feed off of.

“Let’s attract even less attention, though,” said Beatrice. “Let’s go up to the attic separately. I’ll go first, and then you follow me a few minutes later.”

“Okay!” Meadow agreed. She paused. “Do you know how to get to the attic? I mean, I know it’s
up
, but I don’t know how to go any farther up than the second floor.”

“There’s a very narrow wooden spiral staircase tucked into an alcove directly next to Muriel’s bedroom. You might not have noticed because it’s so dark upstairs. And every time we go near Muriel’s room, there’s so much excitement that it overshadows everything else.”