A Quilt in Time (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery) (22 page)

Mavis came into Harriet’s kitchen and set two pink boxes tied with string on the counter.

“I brought two coffee cakes from the new bakery that went in at the opposite end of the block from Annie’s coffee shop downtown. One is almond and the other is Marion berry.”

Harriet filled first the teakettle and then the carafe to the coffee maker and then set them on their respective heat sources.

“Sounds great. I’ll get hot drinks ready. Do you know if Wendy is joining us?”

“Yes, she is,” Mavis told her.

She took a sippy cup from her cabinet and filled it with chocolate milk.

“Sarah asked how Rachel is doing. I told her I was sure you were taking good care of her.”

“She doesn’t like having that cast on her leg, but she’s otherwise good. Curly is a good nurse,” she said, referring to her little rescued dog. “They’ve started taking naps side-by-side on the sofa when the curtain is open and lets the sun shine on it.”

“I’ll let Sarah know. I’m sure that’ll make her feel better.”

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.

“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. “Does 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.”