A Quilt in Time (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery) (39 page)

“Do we have an inventory of blocks from the senior center and the shelter?” Connie asked. “We need to see how many we need to make to help finish the quilts in a timely fashion.”

The rest of the meeting was spent quilting, but Harriet couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah and Joshua and who had wanted Seth dead.

A weak sun was trying to break through the clouds when Harriet took Scooter out for his morning walk.

“The detective is coming to look at her quilt this morning,” she told the dog. “She’s not here on police business, so be nice.”

Detective Morse tapped on the studio door just as Harriet came in from the kitchen after showering and then eating a carton of yogurt. She wished her aunt could have seen her eating so healthy.

“Come in,” she said. “I left your quilt on the machine so you can check it out and see if you like it. I can add more stitching if you want, but if you like what I’ve done, I’ll take it to Carla’s friend so she can start binding it.”

“If you think it has enough quilting, I love it. My most important criteria is that it’s finished. Besides, I’ve never seen you do a quilt that I didn’t like.”

Harriet stepped over to her machine.

“As you can see, I did an X in the center of each ring then used each leg of the X as the stem of a feather-like pattern.”

Detective Morse rubbed her hand lightly over the surface of the quilt.

“This is fantastic. When you said it would be simple, I thought you would do something akin to stitch-in-the-ditch,” she said, referring to the technique where the quilting outlines the seams in the quilt top. “This is much more detailed than I expected.”

“If we’d had more time, I would have done something more intricate in the smaller spaces where the rings overlap. I would have done more in the border, too.”

“If I’d had the time, I wouldn’t have put a border on. I’d have carried the rings to the edge and bound off the resulting scallops.”

“Oh, well, next time,” Harriet said and laughed.

Morse turned away from the quilt to face her.

“I won’t forget this. I know you put in a lot of hours in a short time. I expect your fee to reflect that extra effort.”

“I’ll trade my overtime for information. Do you have time for a cup of coffee or tea?”

Morse shrugged out of her coat and tossed it onto the wing-back chair.

“I thought you’d never ask. I really will toss you a few tidbits of info if you’ve got an old stale cookie or something to go with it.”

“Follow me,” Harriet said and headed for the kitchen. “You can choose your pod for the coffee machine while I go rummage in the freezer.” She headed for the garage.

Ten minutes later, she set a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies on the kitchen table in front of Detective Morse. Morse bit into one of the warm cookies.

“Mmmm, these are delicious. Do you do a lot of cookie baking?”

Harriet laughed. “I wish. No, Mavis and Connie bring them by periodically. They decided that, since I have the studio space, which means we tend to meet here more often than anywhere else, it wasn’t fair to expect me to always provide treats for the whole group. You can count your blessings, too. They’re both much better bakers than I am. I just slice the dough and pop them in the oven.”

“I suppose you want to know if there’s anything new in the Seth Pratt investigation.”

Harriet smiled and waited to see what the detective was willing to share.

“We really don’t have anything new. As promised, I did ask my friend in Seattle to see what she could dig up on Howard. He still has an airtight alibi—that didn’t change. I asked her to see what she could find about the deaths of his first two wives. His first wife’s death is listed as an accident. She fell down a flight of stairs and landed on the cement basement floor. She died from head trauma.”

“That’s awful,” Harriet said. “Did Howard benefit?”

Morse picked up a second cookie.

“As a matter of fact, he did. There was a life insurance policy to the tune of one hundred thousand dollars.”

“That’s a goodly amount. He could have gotten a good start in business with that.”

“Only if he was conservative with his money, and that is not the Howard Pratt I know. Our Howard likes to throw his money around. He likes to buy favors from people in high places.”

“How about wife two, Hannah and Joshua’s mom?”

“I just visited the coroner about another case, so I know you’ve been to see her already about Jill’s autopsy.”

Harriet had the good grace to blush.

“So we found out that Jill’s manner of death is undetermined. Did your friend find out if Howard benefited from her death, too?”

Detective Morse wrapped her hands around her coffee mug.

“Like most criminals, if he is a criminal—and that’s a big if—he learned from his first crime. When Jill died, according to my friend’s confidential sources, he not only collected two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in insurance he also gained control of a similar amount of money that was being held in trust for Joshua.”

Harriet choked on the bite of cookie she was chewing.

“Whoa,” she finally said. “That’s huge. He adopted Joshua so he could control his inheritance and then makes the kid live like an indentured servant.”

“Where did you hear that?” Morse asked her.

“Joshua told me. He lives in a garden shed on Howard’s property and thinks he’s on some sort of probation.” Harriet stopped herself before she mentioned Lauren’s background check on Joshua. She wasn’t sure if Lauren and her geeks had hacked their way to that information or not.

“What do you mean, he thinks he’s on some sort of probation?”

“Let’s just say I have reason to believe the scared-straight diversion program Howard told him he’s on is a program with only one client.”

“Do I want to know how you came by that information?”

Harriet smiled. “Probably not.”

“You’re lucky I’m feeling so grateful about my quilt.”

She tried to make a stern face, but the effect was ruined by a smear of chocolate on her mouth. Harriet pointed at it and handed her a napkin.

“To be serious for a moment, it’s interesting to learn more about Howard and his possible past crimes. My friend and her partner in Seattle are going to look into the two deaths of Howard’s wives, and if they think there’s anything there, they’ll pass on whatever they find to the proper authorities. What we keep coming back to, though, is that Howard has an alibi for the critical time and there is no conceivable motive for him to want Seth dead. By all accounts, Seth was involved in whatever Howard is doing at the senior center.”

“Unless Seth began to suspect that Howard killed his mother,” Harriet pointed out.

“But there’s no evidence Seth suspected his father of anything. It could have equally been Joshua who suspected Howard of killing his mother. We know he hated Howard.”

Harriet leaned back in her chair, her eyes unfocused.

“It’s all a big circle. Everyone has a reason to kill Howard. Howard has reasons to kill any number of people if they’ve found out what he’s done or is doing. But none of this has anything to do with Seth.”

“Welcome to the world of police work. Everyone thinks police work is so glamorous, but really, we spend all our time interviewing and re-interviewing people, trying to figure out where their stories don’t match.”

“I’m going to take a page from your book and go talk to Joshua again. I think he knows more than he’s telling. And I think he’s the only one in the Pratt family that’s likely to tell me the truth.”

“I can’t stop you from talking to anyone, but I strongly advise you not to. I have no real reason to believe Joshua is our killer, but you never know who’s guilty and of what. He may have secrets that have nothing to do with Seth’s murder, and who knows what lengths he might go to, to protect them. And there’s always the chance he
is
the killer, in which case, it could be truly dangerous.”

“His sister Hannah says he a sociopath.”

“Seems like everyone’s labeled a sociopath or psychopath these days,” Morse said. “But, still, sociopath or not, stay away from him.”

“Can you guarantee that Sarah is safe?” Harriet asked her. “If you can promise me that, I’ll go back to my long-arm machine and not talk to anyone.”

“You know I can’t guarantee that, but leave the protection of Sarah to the police.”

“I’ll try,” Harriet told her. “Want me to wrap up a couple of cookies to go for you?”

Morse smiled.

Harriet was sorting pictures from her boarding school days several hours later when she heard someone tapping on her studio door. Reliving her school days through photographs was not the joyful experience it might have been if she’d had a more normal childhood.

Lauren stood on the porch. She held up two white paper coffee cups with the distinctive Steaming Cup logo stamped on the side. Harriet got up and opened the door, and Lauren handed her one of the cups as she entered.

“Mochas are us,” she said and set her cup down while she slipped out of her jacket. She looked at the pictures spread out on the table. “Are you scrapbooking?”

“No, that would be depressing. ‘Here’s little Harriet having birthday cake with the headmistress and the dorm mother.’ No, thanks. These are pictures of scenery from when I was in boarding school. Aiden’s niece and nephew are doing a family genealogy project. They were talking about their grandmother being from Bordeaux, and I told them that I went boarding school there, and I took a photography class and would be happy to give them copies of the photos I have of the city if they wanted. They did, so here I am sorting.”

Lauren slid a wheeled chair over to the table and sat down.

“How very generous of you.”

“It seemed like the right thing to do. I mean, they have to live with Michelle as their mother.”

Lauren sipped her mocha.

“Well, meanwhile, I’ve been tapping my fingers to the bone on my laptop, trying to come up with something we haven’t considered yet.”

“I’m going to drop the pictures off at the vet clinic this afternoon, and then I’ll go try to reach Joshua and see if he is willing or able to tell me anything else about Seth. There has to be something we’re missing.”

“I get the same feeling,” Lauren said. “But I’ve searched everyone involved. I can’t find anything that helps.”

“Morse came by today to get her quilt.”