A Murder of Taste: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery (5 page)

“So what do you do now?” Po asked.

“Nothing. But there’s a record of it now. So if there’s a next time, it will make a difference in how we look at it. But for the present, it’s ‘he said, she said.’”

“And she must be wrong.” Kate rinsed out her mug and put it in the dishwasher.

“Spoken with pure objectivity,” P.J. said.

“Intuition,” Kate snapped back. “And if you think Picasso could ever hurt anyone, P.J. Flanigan, you’re dead wrong. He’s a prince. And you can tell your buddies at the department that.”

“Whoa,” P.J. said, getting up from the table. “Don’t get your dander up, Katie. They’re just doing their job.”

Kate softened. “I suppose.” She checked her watch and picked up her backpack, flinging it over one shoulder. “Well, I have a date with a professor to talk about cameras, so I’m out of here. You two have a good day.”

Kate blew a kiss across the room, then disappeared out the back door.

“Interesting young woman,” P.J. said, watching her leave. Po laughed. “Yes, P.J. I guess you could say that.”

“But she may be wrong about Picasso, Po. The guys at the station found Laurel St. Pierre mighty convincing.”

“That’s too bad. I think they were fooled, P.J. I don’t mean to speak ill of her, but I think Laurel has a bit of the actress in her.”

P.J. shook his head and walked over to the sink to rinse out his cup. “You’re as stubborn as Kate is, Po. Just be careful, is all I ask.”

“Be careful? P.J., now I think it’s you who has the dramatic streak. Be careful of a sweet French chef with a heart as big as his amazing mousse au chocolat? Shame on you!”

But after P.J. left, Po sat alone at the kitchen table, her bills in a neat stack next to her pen, and her mind wandering back over conversations she had with Picasso in recent days. A spring wind had picked up and beat the branches of her willow tree against the side of the house. He’d seemed worried about something, but when Po asked if everything was all right, he’d pushed a smile back across his round face and assured her he was fine. Life was fine, he had said. And if not perfect, he confided to Po, he could live with it.

Live with
what
, Po wondered now.

CHAPTER 4

Kate’s camera hung loosely from her neck, moving rhythmically as she jogged slowly along the river path in the newly built Riverside Park. The park ran along both sides of the Emerald River, a meandering stretch of water that curved its way through the center of the small hilly town. Wide bridges anchored it at either end, with one in the middle.

The park had been talked about for as long as Kate could remember—her own father, Jim Simpson, had spearheaded a group of town leaders, forging the way for the acres of green that now hugged the sides of the river.

Dad would have loved this, she thought. A wide paved path, dotted with gaslights, and clusters of comfortable benches curved along the entire length of the park. Small walking paths spread out from the main lane on the east side of the river like a spider web, meandering back into clumps of trees and picnic tables and play areas with sand-boxes and swings. The bridges provided the perfect place to stand and watch small kayaks and paddle boats go up and down the river. On the west side of the river, the same continuous path, connected by a bridge, ran all the way to the small Crestwood downtown, but the park itself was less developed, more rugged. In a month, the summer concerts would start in the gazebo up near the bridge, and the park would be teeming with people, the bridges crowded, the smell of hotdogs, beer, and lemonade filling the air.

But today the park was quiet, with just a smattering of walkers, a few mothers pushing strollers, and some children just out of school chasing a kite up on the hill. Kate came to a stop beside a wooden bench, cemented into the cobbled path. She bent at the waist and stretched her hands down toward the ground, then sat down and breathed deeply.

“Hey, Miz Simpson, what’s up?”

Kate looked up into the grinning face of Amber King, a student in the senior English class in which Kate substituted often. “Hi, Amber. What are you doing here?”

Amber flopped down on the bench beside her and pointed to her backpack. “I hang out here and people watch. Fodder for my writing.” She looked at Kate’s camera. “Looks like you do the same.”

Kate lifted the camera up, focused on Amber, and snapped it a few times. “I guess you could say that,” she said. “I like watching people through this lens—you see them in a whole new way. Sometimes I almost feel like a voyeur. Take a look.” Amber took the camera, held it in front of her, and looked through the small square viewer. She focused on the river and a family of goslings slowly heading downstream. Then she shifted on the bench and snapped away at the scene behind her, a young mother and her baby lying on their backs on the side of the hill, and further up, capturing a couple as entwined with one another as the clump of trees behind them.

Kate watched Amber as she pivoted on the bench. She was zooming in now on the loving couple up on the hill, snapping a sequence of shots. Kate wondered if she had been that sure of herself at 17. The kids she taught fascinated her, and though substitute teaching had never been on her list of things she wanted to do in life, she was discovering that she liked it. The chance opening when she returned to Crestwood last year had filled a need for both her and the high school. Returning to the same wide halls that housed four years of her life was a nostalgic trip. Some of the teachers who had taught Kate were still there, including Betsy Carroll, a favorite guidance counselor who had spent much of her time keeping Kate on the straight and narrow. She enjoyed the time she now spent with Betsy, speaking adult to adult. And then there were kids like Amber, who made her think she might sign on again next fall if there was a need.

“Very cool camera, Miz Simpson. Digital is the way to go. And the way for me to go is up that yonder hill to ponder the poetry of Yeats.” Amber stood and handed the camera back to Kate. “I will leave you alone to your voyeuring.”

Kate chuckled and watched Amber saunter up the path, find a grassy spot and settle down. Kate followed her through the camera’s eye, then panned across the hilltop to the couple standing close in the shade of the trees. It was a camera-perfect sight—dark green trees, a neatly mulched path, and two entwined figures cloaked in the shadows and lost in a passionate embrace. She lowered her camera to her lap and squinted at the two figures. There was something frighteningly familiar in the stance of the woman, her hands now on her hips. Kate stared hard, and watched as the couple moved another step apart. They seemed to be talking, gesturing. And while Kate continued to stare, the woman lifted her arm and slapped the man forcefully across the face. In the next instant, they moved beyond the trees and out of Kate’s view.

Kate stood and lifted her camera from her neck. “Well, I’ll be,” she muttered. Maybe voyeuring isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She slipped the camera into a small leather case, strained unsuccessfully to catch another glimpse of the couple, then turned and headed toward her home.

***

“I swear it was Laurel St. Pierre,” Kate said. “And she was very, very cozy with some tall, dark stranger. Then all of a sudden, the embrace dissolved and she whacked him one.” Kate, Po, and Eleanor Canterbury sat on Po’s back deck, sipping martinis in the diminishing daylight. Kate had kept the disturbing scene in the river park to herself for 24 hours, but wrapped in a sweater and ensconced in the comfortable Adirondack chair on Po’s wide, comfortable deck, Kate blurted out what she had seen.

The early-evening martini ritual—or sparkling water for those who preferred it—was something Po’s friends could count on—a place and time to unwind, to sit quietly in the company of a friend, or sometimes, like today, to sort through disturbing news.

“I believe you, Kate,” Po said. “But perhaps it was an innocent, chance meeting. Perhaps she was out for a walk and ran into an acquaintance. An old friend. Or …”

“Po, she was kissing him on the lips!” Kate paused and replayed the brief incident in her mind. It had been strange. First the couple was pressed together as if a giant vice had squeezed their bodies tight, and then suddenly arms flailed angrily.

“He was tall,” Kate said. “Definitely not Picasso. But it was so hard to see. They were standing in shadows.”

“We know so little about Laurel,” Eleanor said. She pushed a loose strand of gray hair behind one ear. Eleanor lived a stone’s throw from Po, just at the edge of the college named after her deceased husband’s family, and she often walked by Po’s on nice evenings, her cane tapping out a familiar rhythm in the tree-shaded neighborhood. Sometimes Po worried about her walking alone, but Eleanor insisted the hand-carved cane she’d picked up at a market in Spain was weapon enough should anyone give her trouble. “As if they would,” she’d laugh in her gravely way.

“Laurel is a troubled young woman,” Eleanor said now.

“There’s a pain behind those pretty eyes. I see it sometimes when she’s working in the restaurant. And I saw her at Wally’s drugstore one day when I was picking up my vitamins. She was asking Wally about a stronger medication for pain. When I approached her, she told me she had headaches sometimes, but just between the three of us, I think the pain comes from another place.”

“That may be true, Eleanor,” Kate said. “And you’re a compassionate soul. But it’s Picasso I care about.”

“We all do, Kate,” Po said. “But what goes on between a couple is their business.”

“Oh, phooey, Po. You sound just like my mother. I think you two spent far too much time together. If Picasso is having trouble, I don’t care who it’s with, I want to help him. And I don’t trust Laurel St. Pierre for a single second.” Kate took a drink of her Pellegrino. The clink of ice cubes was loud in the quiet evening air. “There’s something about her, I don’t know. Like she’s looking at me, waiting for me to say something to her. It’s strange. And, frankly, I don’t want her messing with Picasso’s heart.”

Po got up and flipped a switch that lit a low row of gaslights bordering the edge of her deck. They flickered on, bright against the darkening night. She paused behind Kate’s chair and rested one hand on her shoulder. “But Kate, dear, what it comes down to is this: there’s not a thing you can do about it.”

***

After Kate and Eleanor left, Po went inside, slipped a Nora Jones CD into the player and tried to finish an article she was writing for the Sunday magazine on crazy quilts. But thoughts of Picasso kept drifting in and out of her mind, scattering the descriptions of the quilt form’s utilitarian beginnings, and then its evolvement into a hobby for well-to-do women, who spent their days piecing together expensive silk and satin pieces of fabric and embroidering intricate, lovely designs. That was a world away, she thought. Today women rarely had the time or the luxury to devote to such pastimes. They were running children to soccer games or band practice—or helping husbands manage restaurants. Po had seen a change in Picasso in the past few weeks. His ready smile had a droop to it, his chuckle was a little more forced. And even his interest in the quilt they were fashioning for the back wall of his restaurant seemed a little distant, less exuberant. Did this liaison, or whatever it was that Kate encountered, have something to do with it?