1 Forget Me Knot (22 page)

S
UNDAY

C
HAPTER
33

At nine the next morning, Lucy and Birdie arrived to help me put my sewing room back together. Lucy brought the rest of the pumpkin-walnut loaf, and I made a pot of coffee. Before we started working, I showed them my notepad with the translation of the quilts.

Birdie shook her head. “Looks can really be deceiving. When I saw him at the wake, Dr. Godwin appeared to be such a devoted husband, so respectable.”

Lucy frowned. “What I can’t figure out is how he had the nerve to show up at the wake of someone he killed. I mean, that’s cold.”

“No doubt he’s been feeling a lot hotter since Detective Beavers picked him up last night.”

We freshened our cups of coffee and carried them to my sewing room. Cardboard cartons full of jumbled-up cotton material were stacked against one wall, and in the middle of the floor, where I dumped them yesterday, were more piles of fabric, some of which I’d used in my Civil War quilt—a tiny print in double pink, black squares marching across a gold background, purple paisley, and a green leafy print.

Lucy picked up the fabrics from the floor, Birdie carefully folded them, and I stacked them on the shelves according to color. All the miscellaneous items like rulers, scissors, pins, and needles were collected in an empty cardboard box to be sorted through later.

When the floor was cleared, Lucy emptied the rest of the cartons and we sorted fabric. Half-yard cuts and under went to Birdie to fold, while Lucy managed to fold the larger cuts.

“Look what I found.” Lucy pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from a twisted chunk of blue and tan shirting. The composite drawing of the quilt thief wearing a ski mask fluttered to the floor. The only distinguishable features were the odd little eyes and a physical description:
Caucasian, 5’5”to 5’8” stocky
.

I picked up the drawing. “This isn’t much to go on, but there’s enough to know Godwin must have gotten someone else to steal Claire’s quilt from the quilt show. He is, after all, around six feet tall and slender.” I put the paper next to my notepad in the kitchen.

By noon the three of us had cleaned and organized my sewing room. I stood back to admire our hard work. We’d sorted through all the sewing notions in the cardboard box. Scissors, rotary cutters, my collection of antique pin cushions, thimbles, needles, binding clips, and dozens of other sewing accessories had been put back in their proper drawers.

My reclaimed fabric sat neatly folded on floor to ceiling shelves along one wall. One whole shelf was filled with just the blues (I have a weakness for blue), from robin’s egg polka dot to a deep indigo fish batik made in West Africa. The year before I painted the room a soft dove gray—a nice neutral background for the rainbow hues of my fabrics. The whole effect was calm but cheerful. “My sewing room has never been so neat.” I smiled.

“What do you need to clean up next?” asked Lucy.

“I did my bedroom yesterday, so I guess the kitchen is the only big project left.”

“Well, we might as well jump in as long as we’re here.”

Lucy put down the last piece of fabric. “Let’s eat first. I’m hungry. Do you have anything, or shall we run down to the Sandwich Shoppe?”

“How about leftover barbeque?”

By three in the afternoon, my friends were gone, my house was restored, and I was relaxing in the living room with a can of Coke Zero, wondering how Beavers was doing with Godwin. Bumper jumped up on my lap purring, and settled down for a nap while Arthur put his chin on my knee, asking for some attention. I closed my eyes and smiled, thinking life couldn’t get any better than this. Did I really need a man? Animals were much safer and, in my experience, a lot more loyal.

As I scratched Arthur behind the ears, I remembered Dixie was supposed to come over this evening to pick up the appliquéd flower basket wall hanging I promised to give to the charity auction for the Blind Children’s Association. I really needed to get out of my work clothes and take a shower before she came, but I didn’t have the energy to clean up right then. I figured she’d call at some point to get directions, at which time I’d freshen up. Then I fell asleep.

I woke to Arthur growling softly and somebody knocking on my front door. “Okay, Arthur, I’m awake now.” I got up, turned on the porch lights and strained at the peephole to see who it was.

Dixie stood looking at the door and blinking rapidly. I’d never given her my address. How did she find me?

I turned off the alarm and opened the door. “Hi, Dixie. Come on in. I apologize for my appearance, but I thought you’d call first for directions. How did you know where I live?”

Dixie wore a long-sleeved blue shirt and polyester trousers. As she strode into the living room, she smiled. “Your check. Your address and phone number were on the check you gave me. All I had to do was look up your address on Google maps,
et voilà
! If you don’t want anyone to know where you live, you shouldn’t publish the information on your checks.”

Her last remark struck me as a little short of friendly, if not downright snarky. I walked toward the kitchen. “Well, how about some tea?”

She followed me as far as the island. “Fine.”

I put on a pot of water. “I’ll just go and get the quilt.” Arthur followed me down the hall to my sewing room and back to the kitchen, never moving more than two inches from my legs. I realized Arthur hadn’t been out in the backyard since early afternoon, so I opened the back door for him, but he just sat at attention and looked at me.

“Go outside, Arthur, and be a good boy.” Arthur didn’t move. “Go on.” I shoved him outside in the dark and closed the door.

While I made the tea, Dixie sat at the island and admired my quilt. Then she held up the composite drawing of the thief sitting on the counter. “Do you mind if I ask what this is? Looks pretty official.”

I told her about the drawing, hoping she couldn’t see my notepad sitting next to the picture with the translation of the quilts and my commentary. Poor Dixie. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her Godwin was a murderer. His behavior had already caused Claire to withhold a huge gift of money to the Blind Children’s Association. Who knew if BCA could survive the scandal of Godwin’s arrest? If not, Dixie would be out of a job and in these difficult economic times and with her impaired vision, she might not easily find another.

When she put the drawing back, she glanced at my notepad. Before I could stop her, she brought it close to her face to read.

Dixie looked at me with a strange expression.

“I’m sorry, Dixie. I didn’t want you to see those.”

“Since when do you read Braille?”

“I don’t really. I just downloaded a copy of the alphabet from Google and . . .”

Wait. Dixie was looking at snippets of whatever text I gleaned from Claire’s baby quilt and my comments on the text. Nowhere on my notepad did I make any reference to Braille. So how did she know those short phrases were a translation of the Braille on the quilt?

Dixie squinted at me from behind her thick lenses, her eyes blinking wildly.

And suddenly I knew.

C
HAPTER
34

Sometimes a quilter could get so focused on stitching together small pieces of fabric she’d need to take a step back and look at her composition as a whole. She would need to evaluate how each element came together to make the overall design. One way she could do this would be to look at her quilt through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. The resulting image of the quilt was so reduced in size she could see her creation from an entirely new perspective. Flaws in the design just popped out and screamed to be fixed.

I’d been looking at Claire’s murder too closely. Each element of the puzzle was like a small patch with its own unique color and details. I needed to take a step back and look instead at the overall design. I missed some obvious inconsistencies, starting with the composite drawing of the thief. Godwin wasn’t a fit, but Dixie was. Like the wrong end of binoculars, the thick lenses of her glasses made her eyes appear to be smaller than normal—just like in the drawing.

I should have kept my big mouth shut and sent Dixie home, but the words flew out before I could stop them. “It was you. You stole the quilts.”

Dixie stopped blinking and tilted her head, focusing on me with an unsettling stare. Chills tickled the hair on the back of my neck as she got up and came around to my side of the island.

I continued talking, figuring out the details as I went along. “You were the one who received the baby quilt from Claire for the auction. When you handled it, you must have realized the knots were Braille. So you read the quilt and discovered Claire was pregnant with Godwin’s baby. Godwin wanted her to get an abortion, but she was going to keep the baby. She was also going to expose Godwin and cancel her bequest. You realized Godwin wasn’t the only one who’d be ruined. If he went down, so would the Blind Children’s Association.”

Dixie licked her lips and slowly weaved her head from side to side. “No . . .”

Like an idiot, I kept talking. “You couldn’t let that happen, so you threw the baby quilt in the Dumpster. Then you learned one of Claire’s quilts was displayed in the quilt show. You had to find out if that one also contained Braille.”

Dixie’s head was still moving from side to side. “You can’t prove any of this.”

If I were smarter, I would’ve stopped talking, but my mouth got in the way of my better judgment. “Yes. I can. There was a woman at the quilt show who kept touching Claire’s quilt. There are witnesses who will be able to identify you as that woman. You kept touching the quilt because you wanted to read the Braille. When you found out Claire wrote about her affair with Godwin in her quilt, you were compelled to get rid of it. So you came back the next day and stole it. You also grabbed a couple of other quilts to make it look like a random theft. You tried to disguise every feature that might identify you, but you couldn’t disguise your eyes.” I waved the composite drawing in front of her.

Dixie made a low, growling noise in her throat. “You think you’re so clever.”

Yes, I did. I was too impressed with my own cleverness to recognize the danger gathering all around me. “Did Godwin know about the Braille in the quilts? Did the two of you conspire to get rid of them?”

“Godwin didn’t know anything, and he wouldn’t have figured it out. He’s not that smart.”

“So you decided to steal the quilts all on your own?”

Dixie curled her lip and opened and closed her fingers. “Have you ever wanted something so much you’d do anything to protect it? I never told Godwin about the quilts because he would’ve fired me if he realized how much I knew about his personal life. I took a chance and told him I knew about Claire and the baby. I didn’t tell him how I knew. I warned him if he ever tried to fire me, I’d go straight to his wife. It was job security.”

“Godwin’s been arrested, Dixie. There’s nothing more to protect. He’s going to go to jail for murdering Claire. You’ll have to answer for stealing the quilts.”

Dixie brushed past me and headed for the stove. I watched as she reached over to the drawer next to the stove and pulled out a Henckels with a seven-inch serrated blade. “You little witch. I tried to warn you to back off, but I guess you were just too dumb to take a hint.”

I looked at her hand and remembered the knife in my pillow and the note. My mouth went dry. “My God, Dixie. You know where I keep my knives. This isn’t the first time you’ve been in my house, is it? You’re the one who broke in, trashed my house, and left the note in my pillow.”

“I wanted
all
the quilts!”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the knife. “You must have been frustrated when you broke in to Claire’s house and didn’t find them there.”

“What’re you talking about? I never broke into Claire’s house. I didn’t know about the other quilts until you told me they were here in your house.”

“I told you?”

Dixie smiled triumphantly. “Yes, on the phone. When I offered to come get the baby quilt, you told me you were taking
all
of Claire’s quilts back to the Terrys.”

She was right! When would I learn to think before I spoke? It was a character flaw I’d have to work on if I ever got out of this alive.

“I wanted to find out what her other quilts revealed, to see if I needed to get rid of them, too, but once I got inside your house, I couldn’t find them.”

Dixie tightened her grip on the knife.

Arthur was barking outside and clawing at the door. From the time Dixie first appeared at my front door, Arthur had growled; then he resisted leaving my side, even refusing to go outside. Why hadn’t I realized the guard dog was
guarding
me?

I tried to sprint to the back door to let him in, but she quickly stepped in front of me and pointed the knife. I threw up my hands in surrender and hastily backed up until my back hit the island. Then I slowly sidled toward the open space between the kitchen and the living area. My mind ricocheted between blind panic and reason.

If Dixie was the one who broke in to my house, then Godwin’s alibi for that night could be solid after all. Acid burned the back of my throat. I reached the end of the island and put my hand on the counter to steady myself as the horrible truth exploded behind my eyes.

“Oh my God!” I clutched the edge of the counter. “Godwin didn’t kill Claire—you did.”

Dixie’s mouth twisted open. “Godwin always got what he wanted, but he made a huge mistake with Claire. When she canceled her big donation, he panicked. Told me to call to see if I could change her mind. After I read the baby quilt, I knew I could never change her mind. She was determined to expose Godwin, even if the exposure destroyed BCA. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you and Claire were friends. You said so yourself.”

Dixie scoffed. “Life is so simple for people like you and Claire. You don’t have to work like the rest of us. You just do your little bit for charity, pat yourself on the back, and move on. You don’t care about those of us who can’t just
move on
.”

Now wasn’t the time to point out to Dixie the only reason I wasn’t still working as an administrator at UCLA was because of my disability, not because I was a member of the idle rich—which I wasn’t. “Are you talking about the blind children who come to you? Surely there are other places where they can go for help, places where you could work if worse came to worst and BCA shut down.”

“If a scandal shut down BCA, no one would want to hire me. I’d be tainted for life. There are few jobs for the visually impaired, even in an agency like mine. Besides, disabled people have no value in our society. It’s a form of abuse that never gets talked about.”

Dixie wasn’t wrong. The same thing happened to aging women.

“I help the parents respect their kids, to really see them and listen to them. They learn to value my expertise because I’ve been there. They admire me and depend on me to rescue their children.”

“And all of the admiration would stop if BCA folded?”

“Are you serious? I already told you nobody wants to hire a woman who’s legally blind. Without my glasses, I can’t read, I can’t drive, I can’t even cook. You can’t begin to know what it’s like, you with all your leisure time and your stupid quilting.” Her eyes started to blink again. “I’m sick and tired of people like you and Claire—idle, useless people.”

Arthur continued to bark and snarl at the door behind Dixie, but there was no way I could get to the door without getting sliced by the Henckels.

Shaking inside, I held up my hands again in an effort to keep her talking and buy some time. I needed to get to the gun in my bedroom. I started inching backward out of the kitchen toward the bedroom. Dixie came around the island and matched me step for step down the hallway.

“How did you get Claire to take all those drugs? I doubt she would have taken them voluntarily because, as you found out, she was pregnant.”

Dixie smirked. “I went to her house to go over some details of the charity auction. I brought her a ‘healthy treat’ of hand-squeezed grapefruit juice from the trees in my yard. I figured the bitterness of the juice would disguise the flavor of the drugs dissolved in it.”

As she spoke, I looked for some evidence of remorse, but Dixie’s eyes glittered with some mad logic known only to her.

“Did it work?” I still inched backward.

“Not completely. She realized something was wrong when she started to get dizzy. She got scared and tried to get to the phone to call for help, but I was too strong for her. I forced the rest of the drugged juice down her throat until she passed out. Then I waited for her to stop breathing.”

I never stopped moving, but my progress was slow. Every muscle in my body screamed for me to turn and flee, but I knew I’d never get to the bedroom if I made any sudden or rapid movements. Dixie was too close. I tried to stay calm and focused. “What was the blood on her hands from?”

Dixie pulled up one long sleeve, revealing healing scabs where something sharp had recently grated down her arm. “While I was shoving the drugs down her throat, the little whore scratched me with those hard acrylic fingernails she was so proud of.”

“Are you secretly in love with Godwin? Is that it? You must love him an awful lot if you’d kill for him.”

Dixie’s eyes bulged behind her lenses and she thrust the knife once through the air for emphasis. “You don’t know
jack
. I was in love with Claire, but I couldn’t let her know. She wasn’t into women. Godwin I despise. I am the one who built BCA up from nothing. It’s my life’s work, my great achievement. I did all the hard work but Godwin took all the credit.”

“How did you let that happen?”

“Unfortunately, I needed someone like him. He was the handsome, attractive face of the organization. He was the one who could pull in large donations. I didn’t care who he slept with to get money. And believe me, he was always sleeping with somebody.”

My backward progress was painfully slow. I estimated my bedroom was another twenty feet, at the far end of the hallway. I had to keep her talking. “I thought Claire was really devoted to BCA. Why would she want to destroy it?”

“Claire was naive enough to believe Godwin’s lies. I guess when she found out what he was really like, she wanted to get even. I wouldn’t have cared, but if she disgraced Godwin, BCA wouldn’t survive. I wouldn’t survive. In the end, it came down to choosing between Claire and my life’s work. Claire lost.”

I was now just about fifteen feet from my bedroom and the gun in the drawer. “I can imagine how you feel, Dixie. Men have been exploiting women throughout history. I’m surprised you let him manipulate you. You seem so smart and independent.”

“Nice try, Martha.” She took one large step forward. Another large step and she’d be close enough to kill me. I turned and ran down the hall toward my bedroom. I had to get to the gun, or I was dead.

Dixie was right on my heels. She grabbed a handful of curls from behind and my head jerked back, knocking me off balance. I twisted my body and rolled toward her, shoving with all my might at her shins. The blade of the knife slashed the air just inches from my face as the two of us went down.

Dixie fell backward and landed on her butt, the knife skittering out of her hand. While she fumbled around for the Henckels, I scrambled to my feet and ran for my life.

Time seemed to stop and the air felt heavy and viscous as I ran in what seemed like slow motion to my bedroom. My heart boomed in my ears, each beat sounding deep and urgent. Dixie cursed as she got up off the floor. “You’re dead!” she screamed.

I whipped through the doorway into my bedroom, diving toward the table beside my bed for the gun.

Dixie was only a few steps behind in the hallway screaming, “I’ll kill you!”

I picked up my grandmother’s blue and yellow Ohio Star quilt off the top of my bed. With a snap I unfurled it and threw it over Dixie’s head just as she came through the bedroom door.

Her arms flailed inside the quilt. The knife slashed through the fabric of the precious eighty-year-old quilt as Dixie struggled to untangle herself.

Meanwhile, I yanked open the drawer, pulled out the gun, and fumbled to release the safety. Then I pulled back the slide to put a round in the chamber just the way Joey taught me.

Dixie threw the quilt on the ground and growled, “You’re dead now, you bitch. . . .” She stopped and frowned when she saw the gun I pointed at her.

My tongue peeled off the dry roof of my mouth. “Drop the knife, Dixie, or I swear I’ll shoot you dead.” I wished the gun would stop shaking.

Dixie was only five feet in front of me, within easy striking distance. She smiled slowly at my jittering hands. “You’re too scared to use that thing. You probably don’t even know how.”

Suddenly she raised the knife and took a step forward.

I shut my eyes and squeezed the trigger of the Browning semiautomatic .22 caliber pistol.