Crazy as a Quilt (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 8) (31 page)

Sharon and Harriet put their purses and coats away and went out to the grassy area by the driveway with Scooter.

“What will you do if Jules refuses?” Sharon asked.

“Well, it wouldn’t be optimum,” Harriet told her. “But we’d have to figure out another one of us to confront her and claim we’d seen her go in the apartment with Aiden.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

“I’m going to call and see if he’ll come by. I have to admit it’d make me feel better if you stayed within earshot. I think he’s okay, but I’ve only met with him twice, and one of those times he was trying to extort money from me.”

“I wondered.”

“I guess I’d better make the call,” Harriet said and led the way back into the house.

Chapter 28

Harriet dialed the number Jules had given her, and the call went straight to voicemail. She did as instructed, saying only that she needed to see him. An hour later, he still hadn’t called back.

“I’m going to work on my customer quilt out in the studio,” she told Sharon. “We’ll give Jules another hour, and if he doesn’t make contact, I’ll call Lauren and my aunt and see what they think.”

“I’m going to sit in the TV room and stitch on my crazy quilt block, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure, no problem,” Harriet told her.

Forty-five minutes later, Harriet’s stitching was interrupted by a quiet tap on her studio door. She crossed the room and opened the door. Jules stood on her porch, hands in his pockets and a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. His jaw was dark with five o’clock shadow.

“Are you going to invite me in?” he asked.

She held the door wide to admit him and indicated her reception area. He flopped into the nearest wingback chair.

“Yesterday, you barely had the time of day for me. Now you want to see me. We both know you could have left a message with what you found out. So, what do you want?”

Harriet had the grace to blush.

“I did follow up on what you told me. The phone turned out to be a burner. It had been used to call Aiden a bunch of times, even though he says Marine and he didn’t call each other.”

“Why am I here, Harriet?”

“Okay, I’ll cut to the chase. My friends and I searched Michelle’s room and found what looks like a vial of saliva—Aiden’s saliva, if my guess is right. We also found an electric blanket bagged up in a dresser.”

“I’m going to guess Michelle didn’t give you permission to search her room.”

“Umm, it’s a little worse than that. Her room was locked.”

Jules sat up.

“You broke into her bedroom? I like it.”

“We didn’t break in; we used a hidden key.”

“So, the police can’t act on what you found because you didn’t find it legally, right? Is this where I come in to it? You think I’ll be your pet criminal?”

“I went to the police. I told Detective Morse what we found and what we thought happened. She’s going to check to see if blanket fibers were found on Marine, but as you said, she can’t get a warrant to search Michelle’s room based on our illegal search. My friends and I had an idea.”

“And you don’t want to get your hands dirty.”

“Look, you came to me and tried to extort money for information, so don’t try to play Mr. Innocent now. You cast yourself as a bad guy. I do give you credit for coming back and telling me what you know—if that is, in fact, all you know. It doesn’t matter now. You want to know who killed Marine, I want Aiden out of jail. Can we stop with the verbal sparring and get to the plan?”

“Please, enlighten me.”

“First, if you agree to do this, you have to call Detective Morse. It will all be legal and aboveboard. The police will wire you, and you’ll go to Michelle and tell her that, on the day she died, you were trying to find Marine. Maybe you could say Marine wanted you to bring her drugs or something.”

“Because, of course, I’m that kind of guy.”

Harriet glared at him.

“Sorry, continue.”

“You tell Michelle you saw her go into Aiden’s apartment with Marine and then come out alone. You waited until she left then knocked on the door. No one answered. You found out later Marine had been found dead at Aiden’s. If Michelle would like you to keep this piece of information to yourself, she needs to pay you. It’s just another extortion scheme. You should be a natural.”

“What if she decides to just kill me instead? Did you think of that.”

The color drained from Harriet’s face.

“Guess not, huh? I’m expendable.”

“Of course not. I’m sure Detective Morse will have undercover people near you all the time. You could wear a Kevlar vest.”

“Oh, yeah, ‘cause that wouldn’t look suspicious at all.”

“Okay, so, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, after all.” Harriet sat back in her chair. “It all sounded so simple when we talked about it.”

“Things like this are always simpler when it isn’t your hide on the line.”

“We’ll have to think of something else.”

“I’ll do it.” Jules said.

“But it’s too dangerous. You said so yourself.”

“I didn’t say too dangerous. I just pointed out the risks. If Michelle killed my sister, she probably killed my dad, too. Someone needs to stop her.”

“Detective Morse is going to check on the blanket fibers, and check with the genealogy company and find out if she sent in two of her sample and none of Aiden’s. She thinks they can tell male versus female. There was one too many test kits in Michelle’s desk drawer, and one of them still had the spit sample in it, and it wasn’t full anymore. If it all checks out, she’ll talk to the detectives in charge of the case, and if they agree only then will she bring you into it.”

“Maybe I’ll find Michelle and take care of things myself,” Jules said.

“What happened to ‘I’m not a bad guy’? You killing Michelle makes you no better than she is.”

Jules sighed. “I know you’re right, but she killed my family. They may not be much, but they’re my blood. Can you understand that?”

“I do understand the impulse, but you can’t act on it.”

He blew out his breath.

“I know. I’ll call your cop and hope she does the right thing.”

“She will. She’s one of the good guys.” Harriet wrote Morse’s number on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

He looked into her eyes.

“If you say so.” He took the paper and then hung his head.

She looked at him, studying what she could see of his face. He was pale under his day’s growth of beard, and she could see fatigue lines etched into his face.

“You look tired.”

He swiped his hand over his face.

“I’m fine. I’ve been working the midnight shift at the factory.”

Harriet tried to keep her face neutral. She felt ashamed of the assumptions she’d made. After Jules had tried to extort her, she’d just assumed he made his living selling drugs or scamming people or both. Maybe he did all of those things, but he also had a regular job; and she had to at least consider that he might not do any of those other things. She hadn’t bothered to find out.

“Do you want a cup of coffee or something? I mean, as long as you’re here.”

His mouth curved up on one side.

“Oooh, are you inviting the bad boy into the inner sanctum?”

“My roommate is on the other side of the door.” She hoped she was telling the truth. She was pretty sure she’d heard Sharon shuffling around in the kitchen shortly after he had entered. “I also have a ferocious watchdog.”

Jules laughed. “Yeah, we’ve met. Now I’m scared.”

Sharon must have been listening at the door. When Harriet led Jules into the kitchen, she was pouring water into the coffeepot and had an array of pods out on the counter. She had also gotten the box of ginger snaps from the cabinet and had a plate out to put them on.

Scooter wagged his tail and, when Jules sat down, jumped into his lap and attempted to lick his face.

Jules pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

“Let’s see what the good detective has to say for herself.” He tapped in the number Harriet had given him. He identified himself, stated his willingness to help, and then listened.

“Call me when you’re ready,” he said and tapped his phone off.

Harriet and Sharon had stopped what they were doing and stared expectantly at him.

“She wants to check a few more things, but she said there were blanket fibers on my sister’s clothes. She’ll call about the DNA tests tomorrow, but she ran into one of the detectives in charge of the case, and he’s going to talk to his partner about the sting, but he was pretty sure they were going to go along with it. He told her they had nothing to lose. If she confesses, good, but if she doesn’t, they still have Aiden.”

Harriet set a cup of coffee in front of him and sat down opposite him with her own.

“Somehow, I don’t find that very comforting.”

Jules looked up as Sharon slid a plateful of cookies onto the tabletop between them.

“The more we talk about it, the more convinced I am that Michelle killed my sister. It never seemed right that she would go get Marine out of her sobriety program and bring her to Foggy Point to go to a quilting class. I mean, no offense, but…quilting?”

“I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about Marine being a quilter when I saw her.”

“I know Michelle’s mom was very good to my sister, but I never got that same vibe from Michelle. Unless she’s changed from when we were younger, Michelle never does anything that doesn’t benefit Michelle.”

Sharon sat down at the table, and Harriet introduced her to Jules. They talked about California and modeling and anything else but the murder.

“I better go,” Jules told them. “I have to be at work at midnight, and I need to go home before that.”

Harriet walked him to the studio door.

“Thank you for doing this.”

“Don’t thank me until I get Michelle to talk.”

He reached for the doorknob, and Harriet stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Jules, I’m sorry. For the way I’ve treated you.”

“Don’t be. I may not be the villain you thought I was, but I’m nobody’s hero, either. I’m just a guy from the streets trying to get along.”

“Thank you for doing what you’re doing. Even if it doesn’t work, thank you for being willing to try.”

He looked away from her.

“I gotta go.”

Harriet dropped her hand, and he went out the door.

“How do you feel about pizza?” Harriet asked Sharon. “It’s eight o’clock, and I’m sick of cookies and coffee drinks.”

“Pizza sounds really good right now.”

Harriet put food in Scooter’s dish on the kitchen floor and set a dish of dry food on the counter for Fred.

“Let’s go.”

Chapter 29

The opening notes of the song “Jane” by Jefferson Starship sounded on Harriet’s phone as she reached her driveway the next morning at the end of her run. She stopped and keyed her phone on.

“Hello?”

“It’s Morse. I talked to the DNA people. You were right. Michelle sent two female samples. I went to the case detectives, and they’re on board. I also talked to your friend Jules. He worked last night, so we’re going to let him sleep a few hours before we have him approach Michelle. That’ll give us time to get Carla and Wendy out of the house. Are the kids still stashed at the Renfros’?”

Harriet assured her they were.

“Stay out of the way, and I’ll let you know when it’s over.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“And Harriet....you can’t say anything to Aiden about this. It’ll be over soon enough, but until we have the evidence, you can’t tell him.”

“I hate it that he has to suffer for another day.”

“I know. But you have to realize that, for him, it will only be trading one pain for another. It’s going to be real hard when he finds out his sister was willing to let him go to jail for life—or worse.”

“I’m assuming she did all this as yet another ploy to get her hands on her mother’s house and money,” Harriet told her.

“This will end all that. If she killed Marine and her dad, she’s going away and never coming back.”

“I feel sorry for her kids.”

“I’ll call Cookie Jalbert. You probably know she’s a clinical psychologist. She can be trusted to keep her mouth shut until it’s over. But she can also be figuring out the best way to help the kids through this. It wouldn’t surprise me if she and Marcel ended up with them. I’ve heard some things about Michelle’s ex.”

“That’s nice of you to think about them.”

“Yeah, it seems like the children are the ones who suffer most in these situations.”

“Let me know what’s happening when you can.”

They said their goodbyes, and Harriet put her phone back in her pocket.

“Sharon,” she called as she came into the kitchen from the studio.

“What’s up?” Sharon answered, coming down the stairs.

“Morse called as I finished my run. They’re going to have Jules do his thing this afternoon. We need to let the Threads know.”

“I can call people while you shower, if you want. Don’t we need to let Carla know so she can make herself scarce?”

“Detective Morse said something about getting her out of the house. I imagine they’ll plan the meeting in some public place for Jules’s safety. Assuming Michelle takes the bait, they probably have to wait until she delivers the money to him before they can arrest her. If she goes back to the house, Carla probably shouldn’t be there. We should touch base with her just to be sure she knows. I think she and Connie already talked about it, but still....”