A Murder of Taste: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery (11 page)

“Bill and I will be having some things made for the wedding, Selma. I’ll bring my mother’s decorator by some day.”

“When is the wedding?” Po asked.

“Not for nearly a year. My mother said it will take that long to get everything prepared, though I’d prefer to run off and get married tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you?” Selma asked. “One of my daughters did that. I was briefly disappointed, I must admit, but she was shy and didn’t want all the hoopla. We had a great picnic celebration a few weeks later and everyone was happy.”

Janna didn’t smile. “That’s not the way it works in my family,” she said. “One doesn’t cross Charles Hathaway.”

Janna said her father’s name in the way one talked about a foreign dignitary—with distant respect and no warmth—and Po felt an instant of pity for her.

“Come sit with us, Janna,” she said, wanting the moment to pass. “Kate may be along as well.”

But it wasn’t until the question and answer period, following the intriguing lecture on women leaders during the ‘60’s Civil Rights movement, that Kate slid into the seat next to Po. “Sorry, Po,” she whispered. “I got caught up in cropping some shots I took today. But there’s some I especially want you to have so I brought them along. How about we go for coffee after?”

Coffee ended up being decaf lattes at the college coffee shop. Janna excused herself right after the lecture, but Selma, Kate, Leah, and Po gathered around a corner table and curled their fingers around warm mugs of strong coffee. Kate pulled a handful of photos out and spread them across the tabletop. “Okay folks, look what I did today.”

Po looked at the photos, then quickly picked one up.

“It’s the quilt. Where did you get these, Kate?”

“I went over to Picasso’s and offered to take some shots of it because it’s so beautiful. He was pleased, so I enlarged a couple.” She looked at Selma and Leah. “I thought Po would like having it because she’s trying to remember where she’s seen it.”

“It’s absolutely beautiful,” Leah said, holding one of the photos up to the light.

Selma slipped her glasses on, leaned toward Leah, and looked at the photo. “Oh my Lord,” she exclaimed, grabbing the photo directly out of Leah’s hands and staring at it in disbelief. She looked at Po.

“I know exactly where you’ve seen this quilt before, Po Paltrow. You’ve seen it in my shop—a whole lot of years ago. And I’ll tell you this much—it wasn’t made by Laurel St. Pierre.”

CHAPTER 11

Po stared at Selma. Then she took the photo from her and looked at it again. When she finally looked up, her eyes were wide in disbelief. “Esther Woods,” she said softly.

“Exactly. I’d know that quilt anywhere. In fact, I talked Esther into letting me display it in the shop during an October quilt competition years ago. That’s probably where you saw it, Po.”

“Who? What are you talking about?” Kate asked.

“I’m in the dark, too,” Leah said. “I never heard of Esther Woods.”

“Esther lived in Crestwood before you moved here, Leah,” Po said. “And Kate, you probably would never have met her. She lived north of your neighborhood, near the highway, but kept to herself.”

“Lived?” Leah asked.

“Esther died years ago,” Po said.

“Of a broken heart, if you ask me,” Selma said.

“Maybe. But the actual cause was an auto accident. Her husband was driving—”

“Driving drunk, Po. He was drunk as a skunk,” Selma said. She took her glasses off and set them on the table.

Po nodded. “Al Woods was a nasty man.”

“He drove Esther and himself directly off the bridge just west of town,” Selma finished.

“What an awful story,” Kate said. She picked up one of the photos and looked again at the beautiful bird caught up in the still-vivid colors of the pieced background design. “But I still don’t understand how the quilt got on Picasso’s wall. He was quite clear that it belonged to Laurel.”

Po shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea. Unless Eleanor was right and there are copies of this quilt. If Laurel’s quilt was the original, maybe Esther had a copy of the pattern and made hers from that.”

“No, absolutely not,” Selma said. She drained her coffee cup and set it down on the table. Deep wrinkles creased her forehead. “Esther Woods had little in her life that she was proud of. The bird quilt was one of those few things. She designed it, pieced and appliquéd it, and quilted every single stitch herself. I guarantee it.”

“So maybe she passed the pattern on to others,” Leah said.

Selma shook her head. “No. I don’t think she’d have done that. I didn’t know Esther well—no one did because Al Woods was so possessive she rarely ventured out. She was a seamstress—worked her little fingers to the bone, so she sometimes came in for thread and other sewing supplies, but not often. But I did know her feelings for her bird quilt, as she called it. She was so proud of it, and when I asked her if I could display it, you’d have thought she’d won the lottery. I think the quilt represented that part of her that was good and whole and happy, and she would never have allowed others to copy it, at least not knowingly. I’d bet my life on it.”

“Some people can look at a quilt and figure out the pattern—Susan does that sometimes,” Leah said.

“That’s true,” Selma admitted.

“But look closely at this quilt,” Po said, holding a close-up photo of the bird up to the light. “It’s so intricate. It’s all coming back now. I don’t think it could be a copy. I remember the blue and green thread circling around the gold streaks in the bird’s wings. And the tiny gold French knots at the tips of the wings.”

“Do you suppose Picasso can shed some light on it?” Leah asked, pushing her cup aside, and slipping her arms into the sleeves of her sweater.

“Perhaps,” Po said. “We didn’t talk about it much the other day.”

Leah moved the photos of the quilt around on the table like pieces of a puzzle, seeing it from different angles, admiring the fine design. One picture, slightly stuck beneath the others, came loose, and Leah picked it up.

“What’s this, Kate?”

Kate leaned over and looked at the photo. She quickly took it from Leah’s hand. “Oh, I didn’t mean to include that one.” She bit down on her bottom lip and looked from Leah to Po. “I didn’t know I had this picture until I downloaded my camera photos onto the computer. I think Amber, one of my students, must have taken it. I met her in the park that day and let her play with the camera for awhile.” She paused and stared hard at the photo, her brows pulling together. Her heart had nearly leapt out of her chest when she’d discovered the photo an hour before. It was a clear shot of Laurel St. Pierre in the arms of another man. She’d called P.J. instantly, but his message said he’d be back later, and she remembered, then, a meeting he had told her about. “This is for P.J.,” she said aloud. “I’m headed over there on my way home.”

“P.J.?” Leah looked more closely at the picture. She frowned. “Is that Laurel?”

“Yes,” Kate said. “She was in the park the other day—I think I mentioned it to you, Po. I didn’t even know it was Laurel at first. They—Laurel and this man—were standing up near a grove of trees, kind of hidden. When they stepped from the shadow, I realized it was Laurel—and a man. But I didn’t know Amber had taken their picture until today.”

Po took the picture from Kate’s hand and looked at it closely. “The police will want to see this right away, Kate,” Po said.

Kate nodded. “That’s my plan.”

“Oh, my,” Selma said. “It’s one thing to hear the rumors, but quite another to have a picture of it.”

“I almost felt guilty watching them that day,” Kate said. “I didn’t intend to intrude. But then after Laurel was killed, I told P.J. what I’d seen, but without a description, they couldn’t do much except include it in with all the other things people were saying about Laurel.”

“But now you have a picture,” Leah said. “This is good, Kate.”

“Maybe it will help Picasso,” Po said.

Kate nodded.

Selma put her glasses back on and looked carefully at the photo. “He looks vaguely familiar. But I can’t place him.” The picture was passed around and examined carefully.

“Maybe it’s someone Laurel knew before they moved here, someone from back east,” Leah offered.

“And maybe it’s someone who might have a motive for killing her,” Kate said.

“From the looks of that photo, that’s not what’s on his mind.” Selma looked at it again, then put it back down on the table.

“Maybe not. But at least it’s someone else for the police to concentrate on,” Kate said. She scooped up the pictures and stood to slip on her jacket.

The others gathered their purses and coats and pulled out dollar bills to leave on the table for the young waitress waiting to gather their cups.

Kate looked down at the table as if she were still looking at the picture, focusing in on that moment in time. “I was so surprised to see Laurel that day that I kept watching them for a minute. The camera caught the kiss, but there was more that it didn’t see. Laurel—and whoever he is—pulled apart right after the embrace. They seemed to be talking briefly, and then the whole lovely scene was shattered by an angry slap. And I think it was Laurel who was doing the slapping.”

CHAPTER 12