A Quilt in Time (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery) Page 13

  Aunt Beth came into the kitchen carrying a large flat box under her arm.

  “Do you want us in the studio or in the dining room?”

  “Since we’re having coffee cake, we’d probably be better off in the dining room,” Harriet told her. “What do you have there?” She indicated the mystery box.

  “I got a tabletop flip-chart holder for us. It’s hard for everyone to see Robin’s legal pad when we’re making group notes. I figured we could use it when it’s our turn to present our block for the guild quilt-along project, too. I ordered it from the office supply store in Seattle.”

  Mavis came over for a closer look.

  “What a great idea.”

  “It came with plain paper, but I ordered a pad of the sticky note pages also so we can tack them to the wall if we get multiple pages going,” Aunt Beth said.

  Harriet pulled a stack of saucers from her kitchen cupboard.

  “Well done, Auntie. That’s really cool.”

  Beth tugged on the bottom hem of her cardigan and stiffened her spine.

  “I haven’t been cool in decades, if you don’t count last month’s festival, that is.”

  The rest of the Loose Threads trickled in, removing their coats and grabbing their drink of choice before settling in their favorite spot at the table. Carla pulled a portable DVD player and a set of headphones from her tote bag. She popped an educational cartoon into the unit and put the pink earphones on her toddler’s head.

  “We need to be careful what we say around her. She asked me if Michelle was a witch the other day. If Aiden hears her saying that, we’ll be out on the street.”

  Lauren laughed. “She really said that? Good for her.”

  Carla’s face turned pink, but for once she didn’t retreat into silence.

  “It isn’t funny. She has to learn proper behavior.”

  “But the woman is a witch. And she wasn’t nice to Wendy. The child is learning to call a spade a spade,” Lauren countered.

  “Not on my watch,” Carla said.

  Aunt Beth opened her portable flip-chart and set it on the table between Robin and DeAnn.

  “Let’s get busy before Wendy’s show is over,” she suggested and handed Robin a brand-new black marking pen.

  Robin wrote Seth Pratt Murder at the top of the first page.

  “Let’s start with what we know,” she said.

  “Seth’s dead,” Lauren offered with a barely contained snicker.

  “Don’t make me send you to time-out,” Connie scolded.

  Harriet leaned back in her chair.

  “We know for sure Sarah was there. She says she was unconscious when he was killed, and evidence points to that being true, but the only certain part is her being there.”

  “The window glass was broken,” Lauren said, serious now. Robin wrote broken bedroom window.

  “Were the glass shards inside or outside?” DeAnn asked.

  “Good question,” Robin said. “Harriet?”

  “There was glass on the bedroom floor. I didn’t look outside, since it was dark.”

  Robin wrote “glass inside” under the broken window line.

  “Sarah showed evidence of a recent and brutal beating,” Harriet said. “Not only was her face a wreck, the orthopedic contraption on her broken arm was all mangled.”

  Robin made a note.

  “What else do we know for sure?”

  “Sarah’s not in jail,” Lauren pointed out.

  “Good one,” Robin said and wrote it down. “That tells us the police don’t have enough evidence against Sarah to arrest her. Anything else?” She looked from person to person. When no one spoke up, she nodded to Aunt Beth, who got up and pulled the paper from the flip-chart and stuck it to the glass front of the side board.

  Harriet’s eyes got big.

  “Don’t worry, honey. It said on the package that it doesn’t leave a residue,” Aunt Beth assured her.

  Robin drew two vertical lines down the fresh page then wrote at the top of the three sections means, motive, and opportunity.

  “Anyone could have had the opportunity,” DeAnn said.

  Carla twisted her napkin then tore little bits from the end of the paper rope she’d made.

  “Not really,” she said quietly. “I mean, I guess that’s true, but if the cabin belonged to Sarah’s mother, Seth probably used the senior center as his legal address. Didn’t Sarah say he slept there most nights? And he worked there during the day. To kill him at the cabin, someone needed to know he’d be there and not at the senior center.”

  “That’s a good point,” Harriet said. “It had to be someone close enough to the situation that they would know when Seth would be there, which wasn’t all that often.”

  “Unless it was a crime of opportunity,” Mavis suggested. “Maybe someone else was beating Sarah, and Seth arrived unexpectedly. I know it sounds farfetched, but we’re supposed to write down all possible options at this stage of the process. We can eliminate stuff later.”

  The group fell silent. Robin flipped the current page up and wrote on the third piece of chart paper “Random Ideas” and then wrote “Seth interrupted a crime of opportunity.”

  Harriet took a sip of her tea.

  “While you have that flipped up, put ‘Howard wants to blame Sarah.’ That’s what the seniors we met at the center believe.”

  “Why do they think that?” Robin asked when she’d made the note.

  “Apparently, they think he’d throw anyone under the bus to have this end quickly, before it can taint his business and his expensive new memory care unit.”

  “Sarah also suggested there was no love lost between Joshua and the rest of the family,” Lauren told them.

  “Who’s Joshua?” Robin asked.

  “He’s some sort of adopted former stepchild,” Harriet told her. “He’s Hannah’s half-brother. I think.”

  Robin pulled the two pages she was writing on off the chart.

  “I think we need a family tree. Since your loved ones are usually suspects in this sort of thing, maybe we should start there.”

  Harriet’s dog Scooter ran into the dining room from the hallway, barking as loudly as his six-pound body could manage.

  “Hey, little guy, what’s wrong?” Harriet soothed. Scooter buried his head in the cleft under her arm.

  “What’s got into him?” Aunt Beth asked.

  “And him,” Mavis added and pointed to Harriet’s cat. She was the only one who had noticed Fred come into the room behind the dog. Fred’s tail was puffed to three times its normal size, and his back was hunched, causing him to appear to be tiptoeing.

  Beth attempted to pat his head, but the cat hissed and continued on to the window.

  “Look,” Harriet said and pointed to Wendy, who was looking out the dining room window, her pink earphones around her neck.

  Before anyone could get to the window, they heard a series of explosions. Carla leaped up and swept Wendy to the floor, enclosed in her arms. Everyone else scrambled out of their chairs and retreated to the kitchen.

  Harriet stared out the window as she dialed 911 on her cell phone. Her driveway was filled with smoke like it was ground zero on the Fourth of July.

  Then, as suddenly as they had started, the explosions stopped. Harriet scooted out of the dining room and across the foyer to a window that gave her a view of the entire circular driveway. There were flames coming from all the cars she could see.

  “Someone just firebombed our cars,” she said to the dispatcher.

  Chapter 14

  “What’s going on out there?” Beth whispered when Harriet joined the rest of the Threads in the kitchen. The women were huddled on the floor space between the island and the counter.

  Connie made the sign of the cross.

  “Diós mio, the terrorists have arrived in Foggy Point.”

  “I doubt that,” Lauren whispered.

  “I’m guessing we whacked the wrong hornet’s nest.” Harriet held her phone out. “D
oes anyone want to use my phone to call their husband?”

  Lauren was the only other Thread who had her phone with her. Connie, DeAnn and Robin called their families. Aunt Beth took Harriet’s phone when they were finished.

  “Jorge,” she said, “we’ve got trouble at Harriet’s.”

  “Should I call Aiden?” Carla asked.

  Harriet handed her the phone.

  “We’re likely to be here a while, and if you’re late coming home, he’ll worry. If Terry is around you might call him, too. I suspect he knows more about explosives than anyone on the Foggy Point police force.”

  Carla’s boyfriend Terry Jansen was a career Navy SEAL who did some sort of investigation for his branch of the military. It was all very hush-hush, so no one was ever sure where he was or what he was doing. He just showed up when he was able to. With her nomadic upbringing, it seemed Carla was used to people coming and going in her life.

  She took the phone and dialed a number then hung up. A moment later, it rang.

  “Someone blew up our cars at Harriet’s…We’re fine, we were in the house…Okay, see you. He’ll be right over,” she said to Harriet. “He said to stay in the house until he gets here.”

  She dialed a second number and repeated the same information to Aiden, adding that Terry was on his way.

  Robin rose into a crouch then shifted over next to Harriet.

  “Do you really think someone did this because we’re looking into Seth’s murder?”

  “Don’t you? The Small Stitches might steal our quilt pattern ideas, but I can’t see them doing something like this.”

  Robin didn’t smile.

  “Sorry,” Harriet continued, “that was my lame attempt to lighten the mood. Can you think of another reason anyone would attack us as a group? We must have been getting too close to something. I just wish we knew what or who it was.”

  “You and me both.”

  A knock sounded on the door that led to the garage. It opened before Harriet could say anything, and Detective Morse came in, her expression grim.

  “Oh, thank heaven,” Connie whispered.

  Harriet stood, and the rest of the women followed suit. She moved out of the small space where they’d been huddled. Lauren eased toward the dining room.

  “Anyone care to explain why there are bombed out cars sitting in your driveway? I just got a call telling me a military bomb squad was arriving and the FPPD aren’t to touch anything.” Morse turned to look into the face of each woman. “Anyone want to tell me anything?”

  “We know almost nothing,” Harriet turned to block Morse’s line of sight into the dining room. “We were in the dining room having coffee and cake when my driveway blew up.”

  “Why were you all here?”

  “Lauren and I went to the women’s shelter to hang curtains my aunt and Mavis made. The rest of us are all working on quilts and pillowcases for them, too.”

  Lauren had made her escape, and Harriet could only hope she was concealing the flip chart and its pages.

  Morse’s radio crackled. She took it off her belt and turned a knob on its top, adjusting the volume so only she could hear it. She listened with it pressed to her ear for a moment then clipped it back on her belt.

  “We’ll be in here for a while so they can clear your driveway. The men in your lives have been stopped at the bottom of the hill. They expect us to be in here for an hour, so you all have plenty of time to explain to me what’s really going on.”

  Mavis cleared her throat.

  “Before you start accusing Harriet of bombing our cars or, at the least, causing them to be bombed, let’s take a look at the facts. Someone killed Sarah’s fiancé and possibly beat her up in the process. We’re all friends of Sarah’s. Naturally we’re interested in what happens to her, but we haven’t done anything to warrant this sort of treatment.”

  Morse closed her eyes and took a deep breath then let it out.

  “I’m sorry if I came on too strong, but since I’ve been in Foggy Point, every time there’s been a major crime, you all have been in the middle of it. You’ve been lucky so far, but if you keep this up, someone is going to be hurt or even killed.”

  “So you’re saying it was our fault a storm knocked out the power and the road last winter, trapping us in town with a killer?” Mavis asked. “That wasn’t our idea of a good time, you know.”

  “We’re not reading the crime page of the local paper looking for opportunities,” Aunt Beth added. “Each time we’ve been involved in something, it’s because we couldn’t avoid it. For instance, when your best friend is murdered, it’s hard not to ask a few questions.”

  “I get it. I really do. These are people you know. You want to help them. What I want is for you all to not be the next victims. Let the police do their job. It’s what you pay all those tax dollars for.”

  Harriet went to the sink and filled the teakettle.

  “Can you get paper cups from the garage shelf?” she asked her aunt. “Our mugs are still in the dining room…” She looked at Morse. “…and I’m guessing you don’t want us near that big window.”

  Carla went to the refrigerator, found the carton of chocolate milk and refilled Wendy’s sippy cup. Wendy had been clutching the cup when Carla had scooped her up and brought her to the kitchen.

  “You guess correctly,” Morse said. “Now, let’s get back to why you’re really here.”

  Lauren had returned; she gave Harriet a slight nod.

  “We were talking about what happened to Sarah,” Robin admitted finally. “We don’t have any insider information, so it was all speculation. We’re worried about our friend. Surely, you can understand that.”

  “None of us believe Sarah killed Seth,” Connie offered. “Even if she was there when he was killed. She could never have killed him.”

  “Why do you say that?” Morse asked.

  “You saw her, didn’t you? She was beaten nearly senseless, and her arm is in that contraption. If she would let him do all that, why would anything change?” Connie finished with a sigh.

  “Everyone has a breaking point,” Morse told her, echoing what DeAnn had said previously.

  “When we spoke to Sarah in the hospital the first time, she was still talking about getting married to him,” Harriet said as she put teabags into the paper cups her aunt had brought in. When the water boiled, she poured it into the cups. Mavis handed the first round to Robin, Connie, DeAnn, Lauren, Aunt Beth and Detective Morse while Harriet refilled the kettle and set it on the stove to heat again.

  Morse dropped a spoonful of sugar into her cup.

  “Can any of you think of anyone else who would want Seth Pratt dead?”

  Harriet turned from the stove.

  “We don’t know Seth Pratt. He kept Sarah isolated from us. Most of us wouldn’t have known the man if he passed us on the street until the Foggy Point Senior Center open house; and we didn’t exactly have deep personal conversations there.”

  The rest of the Loose Threads nodded as she spoke.

  “He used to come into Tico’s,” Beth told Morse. “Jorge has talked to him—as a customer only. Naturally, when Sarah was in the hospital the first time, we asked him a few questions, but Jorge didn’t know anything useful.”

  “Let me be the judge of what’s useful,” Morse said.

  “You’d do better to talk to him directly,” Beth said.

  Morse stirred her tea.

  “Whether you know something or not, someone’s clearly worried about you.”

  Harriet poured the next round of tea water.

  “I can’t imagine we’re that much of a threat to anyone.”

  Morse’s radio crackled again; she adjusted the volume, listened then said, “Put him in a patrol car at the bottom of the driveway for now. I can’t leave until the bomb squad gives the all-clear.”

  The Loose Threads looked expectantly at her as she turned her radio down.

  “They found a blonde guy lurking in the bushes out by the street
when they were evacuating your neighbors. That sound like anyone you know? Patrol says he’s mid-to-late twenties, slight build.”

  “Possibly Sarah’s…” Harriet paused. …whatever he is. Adopted stepbrother—Josh? He’s blond, isn’t he?”

  “There was a blond boy at the senior center open house,” Mavis suggested.

  Morse looked at Harriet.

  “And you have no idea why he’d be lurking in your bushes?”

  Harriet held her hands up in front of her. Morse’s gaze shifted to Lauren.

  “Don’t look at me,” Lauren protested. “I never met any of Sarah’s family other than at the open house, and I didn’t speak to any of them personally. Him being the bomber does come to mind, though.”

  Morse glared at Harriet.

  “If you women know something, I will find out.”

  “Okay,” Connie said and stood to her full five feet to emphasize her point, “I know you’re just doing your job, but I speak for the group in saying we’ve had enough. We just had our cars blown up in the driveway and aren’t allowed to see our husbands or find out how bad the damage is. We’ve answered your questions to the best of our ability. If you can’t stop harassing us, you’re going to have to go sit in the other room.”

  Morse pursed her lips but didn’t say anything. She topped off her cup of tea and sat down at the table.

  “Anyone have any show-and-tell?” she finally asked.

  Harriet had to turn back to the sink to avoid making eye contact with Lauren and bursting out laughing.

  Lauren pulled her tablet from the bag she’d rescued from the dining room.

  “I have pictures of the curtains we hung,” she said with a straight face.

  The group crowded around and watched as she flipped through the pictures. They were carefully shot so as to not include a view of the outside or any other identifying information.

  “They look real nice,” Mavis commented when they were through.

  “It’s kind of you to help the shelter out like that,” Morse said.

  “We’re kind people,” Lauren told her.

  “Speaking of the shelter,” Harriet said with a glance at Lauren, “we’re going to do a joint quilt project with the women there and the people at the senior center.” She explained the plan she’d made up on the fly when they visited Sarah. “It was all I could think of to try to get Sarah involved in something.”