Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 9) Read online

  “I finished two more blocks of my crazy quilt,” Connie announced.

  Carla twisted her napkin between her fingers.

  “I started a baby quilt for one of the mothers in Wendy’s play group at church. She has four-year-old twin boys, a girl Wendy’s age, and she’s having twins again in August. One of the other moms is making a quilt, too.”

  Connie patted her hand. “That’s very nice of you to make her something new for the babies.”

  The talk went around the table, with each quilter reporting on progress or problems on their current project. It stopped when they got to DeAnn.

  “I have a mission for us, should we choose to accept.”

  Lauren leaned forward. “Oooh, tell us more.”

  “Most of you know I have a younger half-sister,” DeAnn continued. “She runs a non-profit that’s an umbrella organization for the various smaller missing and exploited children’s groups around the state.”

  “I heard something about that,” Mavis said. “Aren’t they doing some kind of an event in Port Angeles in a couple of weeks?”

  DeAnn took a sip of her tea.

  “That’s what I was going to ask you guys about. Molly is doing a dinner and auction, and she has two donors who have pledged ten thousand dollars each already.”

  “Here it comes,” Lauren said. “And she wants us to make a…”

  DeAnn’s shoulders slumped, and she looked at Lauren.

  “She was trying to think of a special thank-you present, and we were talking. It was my idea.”

  “Spit it out,” Lauren said.

  “Since they deal with missing children, I was thinking it would be cool to give them each a disappearing nine-patch quilt.”

  Carla, the youngest member of the group, looked confused.

  “What’s a disappearing nine-patch?”

  Aunt Beth explained. “It’s a simple pattern that ends up looking complicated. You make a basic nine-patch, kind of big, and then you cut it into four parts. You rearrange the four parts and sew them back together.”

  “Which direction do you cut it?” Carla asked.

  “That’s a very good question. You can cut it evenly in half and then cut those halves in half or you can cut corner to corner,” Aunt Beth said.

  “Cutting four small squares is a lot easier than working with the triangles, if you ask me.” Mavis added.

  “I’m willing to buy all the fabric,” DeAnn continued. “That could be my donation. I mean, besides working on the quilt.”

  “I can quilt them on the machine,” Harriet offered. “I’ll sew blocks, too.”

  “I’m willing to do anything,” Robin said.

  Mavis and Connie nodded their agreement.

  “Me, too,” Carla said.

  Harriet got up and went to her desk, where she picked up a box of colored pencils and a large sheet of grid paper. She brought them back to the big table.

  “Okay, let’s see if we can map this out and figure out what we need fabric-wise then decide who will do what.”

  Chapter 2

  The crunch of tires on gravel drew Harriet to her studio window. When she saw James getting out of his white catering van, she went to the door and threw it open.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He handed her two plastic cold-bins.

  “Take those to your kitchen.” He skipped back down the porch steps and leaned into the back of his van, coming out with a large cardboard box. “I told you I’d make it up to you for finding Cyrano. And this is nothing. Consider it a down payment.” He followed her into the kitchen, carried his box to the dining room and returned. “Do you have a deviled egg plate?”

  “Probably. Aunt Beth left a hutch full of dishes in there.” She pointed back toward the dining room.

  “I made eggs, a fruit salad, and an assortment of pastries for you ladies. Just a light snack,” he said and went back to the dining room to fetch the desired serving dish.

  “How did you even know I was hosting a meeting this morning?”

  “I ran into your aunt at the grocery store last night. She was at the meat counter buying chicken breasts. She told me she was making salad for a work day at your house, and I asked if I could bring breakfast.”

  “Well, this looks delicious, but you really don’t owe me anything.”

  “I can’t begin to describe how shocked I was when I went out to check on Cyrano and discovered he wasn’t there. I couldn’t breathe, my heart started racing…man…” He ran his hand through his short hair. “If the gate had been open, or if he’d dug a tunnel under the fence, I’d have been upset, but it wouldn’t have been so shocking. He was there one minute and gone the next with no indication of what had happened.”

  “I’m glad it all turned out okay. Melanie thought she could trust her kids to stay in the house while she ran around the block. She knows better now.”

  James’s face became serious. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to him. My dream for a lot of years has been to own my own restaurant, and I know that means I don’t have time for a committed relationship. If the restaurant is my wife, Cyrano is our child. Until the business is more established, he’s all I’ve got.”

  “Well, I was happy to help you both. I know I’d be heartbroken if either of my boys disappeared.”

  “Speaking of that, how are you doing with Doc being gone?”

  “I meant my dog and cat, but since you mention it, I’m doing fine. It’s actually a bit of a relief. Aiden’s life has been in such turmoil since he returned from Africa last year that he wasn’t really in a position to be in a relationship—with me or anyone else. Now, instead of being emotionally unavailable but physically present, he’s not present on either count.”

  “I guess that makes sense. It just seemed like you two fit together. Even when things were tough, you seemed like a team.”

  “Looks can be deceiving, I guess. I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.”

  “Let’s hope that’s all behind you and things will be good when he gets back.”

  “Yeah, let’s hope. In the meantime, I have a meeting to get ready for.”

  He unboxed the pastries, which were on stacked baking sheets.

  “Preheat your oven to four hundred and then pop these in for about five or six minutes—just enough to crisp them up—then serve them warm.” He looked out the kitchen window. “Your aunt just arrived. I better get back to the restaurant. I can stop by tomorrow and pick up my pans, or if Lauren is coming to your meeting, you could send them with her, since it’s not that far out of her way.”

  “Thanks again for all this, and give your boy a hug from his auntie Harriet.”

  He picked up his empty boxes.

  “Will do. Enjoy.” He went out through the studio; Harriet could hear him greet her aunt as they passed at the outer doorway.

  When she reached the kitchen, Beth looked around at the pastries lined up on the counters waiting for their turn in the oven.

  “He’s a useful one to have around.” She shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the closet.

  “He’s grateful that I found his dog even though I’m pretty sure his neighbor would have returned Cyrano as soon as she realized her kids had kidnapped him. I was lucky enough to get there first, hence…” Harriet spread her hands and gestured around the kitchen. “…this bounty.”

  Connie led the way from the dining room to Harriet’s studio.

  “I don’t think I’ll be hungry again until sometime tomorrow.”

  “Me, either,” Mavis agreed.

  DeAnn set her bag on the cutting table and pulled out several folds of fabric. She divided the pieces into two groups and pushed one pile to each end of the table.

  “I tried to get colors that were close to what we drew up on the plan. I hope it’s okay with everyone, but I saw a nice Civil War reproduction fabric in lavender, and I realized that might be a good way to make the quilts slightly different but essentially the same.”
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  “Oh, honey, that’s a great idea,” Mavis said.

  Connie spread out the fabric in front of her.

  “How shall we do this? Should we have several big work days, or should we each make a few blocks?”

  Robin, true to her background as a lawyer, pulled out a yellow legal tablet and a pen, ready to document whatever the group decided.

  “We should be able to each take some of the fabric. Everyone here cuts and sews accurately enough it should all match up.”

  Mavis felt the edge of the fabric in front of her.

  “I agree that we all know how to cut and sew accurately, but that isn’t always enough. Remember that black-and-red quilt I made a few years back? I cut a bunch of the pieces at our meeting at the quilt store. My ruler had fallen out of my bag at home, so I used one of the ones Marjorie keeps on hand for people to borrow. It was a different brand than mine, and that quilt had a one hundred and twenty-two pieces in each block.

  “You wouldn’t think it would make that much of a difference, but the blocks I made from the pieces I measured with Marjorie’s ruler were almost a half-inch smaller than the ones I’d made at home. Needless to say, I had to do them all over again.”

  “Even if we do a work day together, we would need to make sure we were using the same brand of ruler, and even then compare them to each other,” Harriet pointed out.

  The Threads began pulling out their calendars to figure out when they could meet again.

  “Is your friend going to cook for us again?” DeAnn asked Harriet. “His pastries are—” She suddenly leaned sideways in her chair, looking past Connie and out the bow window. “I wonder what my sister is doing here.”

  Harriet got up and went to the door.

  “One way to find out.” She opened it just as a slender auburn-haired young woman reached the porch.

  “Hi, I’m Harriet. You must be Molly, come on in.”

  DeAnn stood up as they approached the table.

  “Molly, what are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I…”

  Mavis got up as well and went to the new arrival, leading her to a chair next to DeAnn. “Why don’t you come in and sit down. We’ll get you a nice cup of tea and a pastry. Then you can tell us what’s troubling you.”

  Aunt Beth went into the kitchen while Mavis was talking. Connie went to the instant-hot-water pot Harriet kept in her reception area, made a cup of tea and brought it back to Molly. Beth returned with one of James’s pastries on a plate and set it on the table in front of her.

  DeAnn was ripping the edge of her notepaper into little shreds, her foot tapping a silent rhythm on the floor.

  “Are you comfy?” she asked glaring at Aunt Beth. “Is everything okay? How did you get that bruise on your jaw?”

  Molly sipped her tea and set her mug down.

  “My ex-boyfriend Josh clocked me.”

  “I’ll kill him,” DeAnn said.

  “Did you hear me?” Molly said a little too loud. “He’s my ex-boyfriend. He hit me, I called the police, they took him away, I took out a domestic violence order of protection, and the next day he was out and trying to make up with me.”

  “I’ll kill him,” DeAnn muttered again.

  Lauren put her hand on DeAnn’s arm.

  “I don’t think you’re helping.”

  “He follows me to my office, I call the police. They warn him away, and two days later, he’s sitting in his car across from my apartment, just beyond the three-hundred-yard requirement with a telephoto lens on his camera.”

  “Can’t the police put him in jail?” Harriet asked.

  Molly looked at her. “I wish it were that simple. It seems like the only penalty for breaking the order is being chased away by the police. As long as he doesn’t hit me again, they don’t want to put him in jail.”

  DeAnn started to speak. Molly held her hand up.

  “That’s why I’m here. I decided since I need to be here for the event in a couple of weeks, I might as well come now. I can work from anywhere. I’m either on the computer and phone, or I’m traveling to other cities, so it doesn’t matter where home base is.”

  Carla twirled a strand of hair around her finger.

  “Won’t he just follow you here?” Her cheeks turned pink, but she maintained eye-contact with Molly.

  Molly chewed a bite of her croissant thoughtfully.

  “He could. But so far, he does his stalking around his work hours, and since he works in Seattle, it will be harder for him. He may show up a time or two, but I’m staying at my parents’. I did stop by the Foggy Point Police Department on my way into town. I gave them a copy of the order and told them where I was staying as well as a description of his car and his license number.”

  “We know a good domestic violence shelter,” Connie said.

  “I’m nowhere near needing a shelter,” Molly told her. “I promise you, he hit me once, and I told him it was one too many. We broke up on the spot, and the police hauled him away. I really think it will be okay. He’s too lazy to drive all this way just to get back at me, anyway. He thinks he’s irresistible to women. He’ll have another girlfriend by the end of the week.”

  DeAnn’s face brightened.

  “I don’t like the reason, but I’m glad you’re here. The kids will be thrilled.”

  Molly finished her tea and pastry and stood up.

  “I better go, I need to go get settled at Mom and Dad’s.” She gathered her purse and jacket and left.

  “I need to leave early, too,” Robin said. “Can we pick a date to meet again?”

  After comparing schedules, the group decided they would meet on Thursday, three days hence, at Pins and Needles Quilt Shop, and Robin left. The remaining group began the process of pressing the fabrics and comparing their rulers before they began to cut the first fabric into five-inch-wide strips.

  Aunt Beth, Mavis and Lauren retreated to the kitchen while Harriet saw the rest of the Threads out. When she joined them, Lauren handed Harriet her purse and fleece jacket.

  “We made an executive decision. Your aunt was pointing out that you haven’t been out for lunch or coffee or anything else since you started your big job, so we thought we’d take you to the Steaming Cup for a hot cocoa or iced tea or something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?” Lauren asked.

  “Okay, I’ll come out. My project is done, and I don’t have to start my next job until tomorrow, at least.”

  Lauren looked at Mavis and Beth.

  “That seemed way too simple.”

  Harriet laughed. “I’m tired of me being home, too. In spite of the drama you all imagined, I really was just working hard.” She looked at her aunt. “You should be proud of me for being so industrious. I got paid double my normal fee for rearranging my schedule and for accommodating their tight deadline.”

  “Oh, honey, we are proud of you,” Mavis said. “We should have known you wouldn’t shut us out if you were upset about Aiden.”

  “Shall I drive?” Harriet asked before another discussion about her relationship got started.

  The Steaming Cup wasn’t very busy when they arrived, so the barista waved them to a table after they’d ordered and delivered the drinks when they were ready.

  Aunt Beth took her mug of black tea and sipped it.

  “I don’t know how you can drink cocoa after all the sweets we had this morning.”

  Harriet took her spoon and scooped a bite of whipped cream from her cocoa, licking it slowly, her eyes closed.

  “Mmmmm, this is so good. I’ve been living on tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for weeks. I’ve got a lot of lost ground to cover.”

  Lauren looked up from her own cup of cocoa.

  “I have no excuse.”

  “So, what’s the deal with DeAnn’s sister?” Harriet asked.

  “I didn’t even know she had a sister,” Lauren said.

  Mavis twirled her spoon.

  “No
reason you would. Molly left home for college and didn’t live here again from that point on. That would have been ten or fifteen years ago.”

  “I don’t remember seeing her around here for holidays or anything,” Lauren persisted.

  Mavis and Aunt Beth exchanged a look.

  “What?” Harriet asked.

  Aunt Beth pressed her lips together before speaking.

  “Something happened when Molly was a little girl. She wasn’t more than five or six.” She looked at Mavis for confirmation. Her friend nodded, and she continued, “She was playing with a neighbor girl…”

  “Amber Price,” Mavis supplied.

  “No one knows what really happened. Molly was found wandering in Fogg Park by someone from the homeless camp.”

  “And Amber was never found,” Mavis finished.

  “Not ever?” Harriet asked in a hushed tone.

  Beth and Mavis shook their heads.

  Lauren pulled her tablet computer from her bag and tapped it awake. She entered Amber’s name and read the results.

  “Wow, looks like they’ve done a lot to try to find her. They even had that horse search group Texas EquuSearch come and everything.” She was silent as she read more. “Looks like Molly has been pretty involved over the years in these searches.”

  Mavis and Aunt Beth looked at each other again.

  “What aren’t you telling us?” Harriet demanded.

  Aunt Beth sipped her tea, stalling.

  “Molly became pretty obsessed,” she finally said. “After DeAnn and her brother went away to college, her parents moved the family to her stepdad’s parents’ farm in eastern Washington. The story was the grandparents were getting old and needed help. We all knew they were trying to get that little girl out of town and away from her obsession about Amber.”

  Aunt Beth picked up her tea again, and Mavis took up the story.

  “The problem was, Molly couldn’t remember anything. She didn’t even remember that she went to Amber’s house that day. She was sure if she could just recall what happened, they could find Amber and bring her home.”

  “Wow,” Harriet murmured.

  “No one was happy when she graduated college with a degree in social work and went to work for that missing children place.” Mavis picked her mug up and held it to her lips. She set it down without taking a drink. “And now she’s running the whole place.”