Crazy as a Quilt (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 8) (16 page)

“I need to talk to Harriet,” Michelle was saying as she followed Connie through the door.

“My day is complete,” Harriet said and slumped into one of her kitchen chairs. “What do you want, Michelle?”

“I’m going to ignore that, since I know you’re upset about my brother. Actually, that’s why I’m here. Two detectives just left Aiden’s house. They wanted me to give them permission to search the place. I told them it wasn’t my house, so I was unable to help them. They assured me they’d return in the morning with a warrant. I may be inactive right now due to my recent troubles, but I’m still an officer of the court, which limits what I’m able to do.”

She sat down opposite Harriet. Beth remained standing.

“What are you suggesting?” she asked.

“I’m going to take my laptop to the coffee shop where I know the cops take their breaks and be very visible. I left the kitchen door unlocked when I left. Since they have Aiden locked up, no one has a reason to stake out his house. I can’t say any more.” She stood up and looked at her watch. “I expect to be gone two or three hours.”

“Okay,” Harriet said.

Michelle turned and went back through the kitchen door. A moment later, they heard the outside door open and shut.

Aunt Beth looked at Mavis and Connie and then turned to Harriet.

“We’ll go with you.”

Harriet stood up.

“Are you sure you want to do that? What if we find incriminating evidence? Would you remove it? Would you stop me if I wanted to remove it?”

Beth put her hand on Harriet’s arm. “I’ve known that boy since he was he was in knee pants,” she said. “There is no way he killed Marine or gave her drugs or anything else. There will be no evidence.”

“You’re right. We should go look, just to be sure there isn’t anything innocent that could be twisted into something else.” Harriet grabbed her purse and jacket from the closet. “I’ll drive.”

Aiden’s long driveway was dark and quiet as Harriet guided her car up the hill and around to the back of the large Victorian home that had belonged to his parents. True to her word, Michelle had left the door unlocked.

Harriet headed for the servants’ stairs that led from the kitchen to the second and third floors.

“Aiden’s bedroom and sitting room are on the second floor. I think we should start there.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Aunt Beth instructed the other three when they’d entered the first room. She held out a handful of one-size-fits-all plastic food handling gloves.

“These are from when I was helping Jorge package his homemade tortillas. I only have one for each of us. If you have to touch anything, do it with your glove hand.”

Connie took her glove and put it on.

“Good thinking.”

What had once been an upstairs parlor in the Victorian house had been modernized with a flat-screen TV, a gas fireplace inset, and black leather furniture. African masks and weavings adorned the walls.

Harriet sat on the sofa and picked a book up off the coffee table.

“This is the yearbook Michelle was looking at the other day. It has a picture of Marine and Aiden at the prom. Do you suppose this is what she wanted us to take away?”

“All the detectives have to do is go to the high school, and they can get a copy of the yearbook.” Connie told her.

“We need to keep looking, then. Michelle must have seen something she thinks we need to remove.” Harriet got up and went into the bedroom.

Dark wood bookshelves filled one long wall. She recognized the family albums from when his parents lived in France. He’d helped Lainie and Etienne with a family history project a few weeks before and had showed them the books.

A carved cherry bed was centered on the short wall, with matching nightstands on either side. A lamp and a clock were on the near stand; this was clearly the side of the bed Aiden slept on. A stack of leather-bound journals sat in front of the clock. Harriet picked up the top book from the stack with her gloved hand and flipped it open. She recognized the handwriting. It was less mature but definitely Aiden’s.

She took the first two books and sat down on the edge of the bed to read. He had chronicled his troubles with Marine. When she’d skimmed the first two, she reached for the rest of the stack and paged through them, slowing down when she reached the section where he talked about Marine’s scheme to convince the whole town he was her baby-daddy.

Aunt Beth came into the bedroom.

“We’ve been through everything, but other than the yearbook, there isn’t anything here. Have you found something?”

Harriet looked up from the journal.

“Oh, yeah.” She ran her gloved finger down the page in front of her, stopping when she found the place. “‘She’s ruining my life,’” she read. “’I wish she was dead’.” She shut the book. “I think we’ve found what Michelle was talking about.” She looked at the wall of books.

“What are you looking for?” her aunt asked when Harriet stood up to get a closer look.

“Aiden numbered his journals. The ones by the bed are from the middle of a series. I’m just wondering where the rest of them are. I don’t see any similar volumes in here.”

“Maybe he brought them down from the attic,” Mavis said from the doorway. “His mother always kept her old pictures up there. Maybe his journals were up there, too.”

Connie joined them.

“I’m not comfortable removing anything the police might be looking for from the house, but I don’t have a problem with returning these journals to the box they came from in the attic, if we find that box.”

Harriet went back toward the hallway.

“Let’s go find that box.”

It took a half-hour and several sneezing fits before they found two boxes marked “Aiden’s Journals.”

“Hallelujah,” Harriet exclaimed. She folded the flaps back on the first box and could see the space the journals in Aiden’s bedroom had occupied. “I’m a little surprised he put these back under so many others.”

Connie looked up from a box she was returning to the industrial storage shelves that had been erected in one of the gable niches.

“Maybe he got them out when he heard who was coming to stay with Michelle. He could have planned on destroying them, but he hasn’t been home to do it.”

“I suppose,” Harriet mused. “If we all agree, I’m going to go down and get them. I think we should put them back in with the other journals and then bury them deep.”

“Would it be too obvious if we moved them over to this section where all the old clothes are?” Mavis asked.

Harriet paused at the top of the stairs.

“It can’t hurt. Just remember to keep your hands covered when you move the boxes.”

Beth pulled her sleeve back and looked at her watch.

“We better wrap it up here. We’ve been here almost an hour and a half. How long did Michelle say she’d be gone?”

“She said two or three hours,” Connie answered.

“I’d like to check out the room Marine was staying in,” Harriet told them.

“Do you know which one it is?” Connie asked.

“I know Michelle and the kids stay at the other end of this floor,” Harriet said. “Let’s see if her room is down there.”

They made their way down the hallway, across the landing that looked down on the entry hall, and into the opposite wing.

“Let’s each try a door,” Harriet suggested.

Mavis opened the third door down on the left.

“Jackpot. There’s no mistaking this ratty fur-collared coat.” She entered the room, followed by Harriet.

Harriet turned slowly in a circle then stepped over to a fake leather hobo bag sitting on a wooden chair by the door. She reached into the bag and stirred the clothing around, verifying there was nothing else inside.

“This is really sad. She was supposed to be staying for a week or more, and there are only two changes of clothes here—no undies and no night clothes.” She went to the closet and opened the door. “Nothing in here, either.”

Mavis crossed the room to the desk.

“She actually did a little work on her quilt block.” She held the piece up and showed it to Harriet.

“Are you ladies finding anything?” Beth asked from the doorway.

“Not really,” Harriet said. “I want to check one more thing, though.”

She went to the bed and shoved her gloved hand and forearm between the mattress and box spring, sweeping it along the length of the bed, stopping when her hand encountered something. She slowly pulled her arm back out, clutching a worn black leather zip case in her hand.

“What have we there?” Aunt Beth asked.

Harriet unzipped the case and separated the two halves.

“This is interesting. I’m not well versed on my illegal drugs, but there are two syringes, a small spoon and two cellophane packages with crumbly whitish stuff inside.”

Mavis stepped over to take a closer look.

“Looks like heroin to me.”

Beth laughed. “Based on your vast knowledge of illicit drugs?”

“Hey, I watch the crime channel. They always pull these little bags from the suspect’s pocket.”

Harriet zipped the case back up and returned it to its hiding place.

“Does anyone else find it weird that Marine seemed desperate for drugs when she came to class and ended up at Aiden’s with what we guess is animal medicine in her arm, but she had a supply of some drug she could have been using the whole time?”

“That
is
a little strange,” Beth said.

“Maybe Michelle didn’t leave her alone long enough for her to use her own supply,” Connie suggested.

“I’m guessing addicts are pretty adept at getting away to use their drugs,” Harriet said.

Aunt Beth glanced at her watch again.

“We better get going.”

Harriet guided her car into the parking lot of the Steaming Cup coffee shop. She had called Lauren from Aiden’s driveway to give her the update, and Lauren confessed she and Jessica were having a hot cocoa nightcap and invited Harriet and her coconspirators to join them.

“That makes no sense,” Jessica said when Harriet and the other Threads had their hot drinks and were seated in upholstered chairs and a sofa in front of the coffee shop’s gas fireplace. “Marine was definitely hurting when we saw her at the church. She needed her drugs. Why would she leave home without them?”

Harriet stirred the whipped cream into her hot chocolate.

“Could she have been so impaired she didn’t remember she’d stashed drugs under her mattress?”

“Anything’s possible,” Jessica told her. “I’ve been around addicts, but I’m certainly no expert. My training was aimed more at their soul than their body.”

Lauren slid her tablet from her bag and woke it up.

“I think we need to change our focus. We’re concentrating too much on Aiden.”

Harriet felt her cheeks flush.

“He
is
the one sitting in jail.”

“Calm down, I get it. I’m just saying, since we already know he didn’t do it, maybe we should be concentrating more on who else wanted Marine dead. As near as I can tell, her mom is still somewhere in the area. From all her address changes, I’m pretty sure she does a lot of couch surfing. Or maybe she’s just had a lot of live-in boyfriends with the men having the living quarters. Michelle mentioned a new husband, but all the marriage records I’ve found have a matching divorce or annulment.”