Murders on Elderberry Road: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery (20 page)

Po also learned that Wesley had a ticket confirmation in his pocket for a flight to Mexico two days off, that he was trying to lay claim to several one-hundred dollar bills lying on the bottom of the dumpster when he met his untimely demise, and that he had worked for the Elderberry Shop corporation for several months.

This time Po groaned out loud.

“Po, is that you?”

Po looked up. A small silver Passat idled at the curb near the end of the running path.

Leah leaned through the open window. “I can see by the look on your face that you’ve heard the news.”

Po wiped the perspiration from her brow with the small towel around her neck. She wasn’t sure which had caused her heart to race so — the running or the news. “How much more can those poor folks take, Leah?”

“I don’t know. Selma must be beside herself. I was going to go over there tonight anyway. Care to join me?”

Po assured her that she did. And knowing Kate would want to be there, too, she called her after showering and dressing, and left a message on her answering machine.

They all showed up, of course, just as Po knew they would. Kate had called Phoebe and Maggie. Leah had stopped by Eleanor’s.

“So, you ladies need some extra quilting time?” Selma asked, and then she allowed herself to fall into Po’s tight embrace.

“Here,” Maggie said. “I’ve brought food.” She set a large, colorful platter in the middle of the table. The ceramic plate was glazed to a high sheen, but the real point of interest was its shape — a large, beautiful woman, lying on her back and floating serenely in some invisible sea. She wore a bright red bikini and sunglasses, and her wide, round arms, her shapely hands and painted nails formed a rim around the edge of the platter. In the center, an ample pink belly held a platter full of Maggie’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. Two giant breasts, covered in a bikini top, watched guard over the cookies.

Phoebe collapsed in laughter. The others paraded around the table, viewing the newest piece of Maggie’s art with great delight.

“And her name?” Kate asked between giggles.

“Madame Cookie, of course,” Maggie answered, “My sister found her at the Plaza Art Fair in Kansas City last month. Couldn’t resist her.”

“Of course she couldn’t,” Selma said. “Who could?”

“She’s worthy of carrying your chocolate chip cookies, Maggie, and I wouldn’t say that about just anyone.” Leah grabbed a warm cookie off the plate.

Maggie blew her a kiss.

“Well, I brought something, too,” said Phoebe. She walked over to the back door, opened it, and pulled inside an easel with a giant pad of white paper on it. “Jimmy bought this for the twins, but since it’ll be a couple years before they can use it, he loaned it to us.”

“For a Queen Bees’ crime briefing,” Po said. “Phoebe, you’re a genius.”

“I figure we’ve all been sleuthing like crazy and it’s time to put thoughts to paper.” She stretched out the easel legs until the board was steady and pulled out a pack of marking pens. “Okay, so let’s start with you, Kate. What does P.J. say about this latest development?”

In minutes the Queen Bees had gathered around the table, munching on cookies and sipping the coffee Selma had put on when she saw them coming. Phoebe stood at the end, scribbling comments on the large white sheet of paper.

The police didn’t know what to think, Kate admitted. P.J. had tracked her down and called her out of class that day, wanting to make sure she was okay. And then he’d filled her in. There were no fingerprints on anything, he said, so who ever had released the lid of the dumpster knew exactly what he was doing. The only other thing they found was the bottle of Scotch. And it was covered with fingerprints. All Wesley’s.

“That’s odd,” Po said. “Someone had to give him the bottle.”

“P.J. said a kid from the Elderberry neighborhood saw the bottle when he rode his bike through the alley on his way home around eight o’clock. It was sitting outside the wine store on the steps.”

“Odd place for a pint of Scotch. Someone must have put it there and wiped it clean,” Po said.

“Someone like Ambrose or Jesse? They’re the only ones who sell good Scotch around here.” Selma walked around the table with her coffeepot. She was more at ease when moving, less anxious when there were tasks to be done.

“And it was their store,” Maggie added.

“But why would they leave it outside? Everyone knows Wesley is a rumpot.” Phoebe scratched her head.

“Someone may have wanted him to have it. To get tipsy.” Maggie frowned, then decided she may have hit on something. “If he was tipsy, he couldn’t fight back. Wesley was a frightful brute and could have beaten anyone off. I think it would have been a wise move to get him drunk, lure him to the dumpster, then smash! It’s all over.”

Kate frowned. “But why would anyone want Wesley dead? That’s the real issue here. He was an unfortunate lush who wasn’t very good at his terrible job, but that really doesn’t merit a terrible death like that. There must have been something else.”

Po thought back to the night he frightened her and Susan in the shop. “He said some odd things that night he came into the shop,” she said aloud. “I thought he was speaking nonsense through the haze of the liquor, but he talked about knowing things, being curious. And how it all paid off. The way he talked about Owen being dead and Max nearly so, made me think he did it. He was about to be fired, he hated Owen Hill — it all fit.”

The others nodded.

“But he also talked about being safe, protected,” Po continued. “Which means he probably did know something.”

“So he was blackmailing someone,” Phoebe said, writing BLACKMAIL in huge letters on the white sheet of paper. “Okay, so who?”

“The person who killed Owen and put Max into a coma,” Leah said, and Phoebe duly recorded it.

“Daisy was ready to kill Owen,” Selma offered. “And Max was picking up the torch.”

Phoebe wrote DAISY on the sheet.

Selma looked up at the list. “You might as well put me up there, too, Phoebe. I didn’t do it, but I had motive.”

“No,” Phoebe said simply.

“What about Ambrose and Jesse?” Maggie asked. “They could have put that bottle out to get Wesley snockered, then unlocked the latch as he was hanging over the side trying to get the money. And they both knew Owen was at the shop late that night. They’d have much more control now that he’s not the corporation director.”

“That’s true,” Selma admitted. “Owen squelched many of their uppity ideas.”

Phoebe added AMBROSE and JESSE to the list.

“I may be struck dead,” Eleanor said, “but I think we’ve forgotten someone important on this list.”

“Who’s that, Eleanor,” Kate asked.

“The Reverend Gottrey. I don’t mean to speak ill of a man of the cloth. I happen to think our priest at St. Pats is amazing, wonderful and talks spirituality better than Gandhi and Mother Theresa. But I think the Reverend may have mighty powerful money motives.”

“The Owen Hills Spiritual Retreat, the church roof —and those may just be the tip of the treasure,” Leah said. “I know he would never be getting that wonderful farm if Owen were alive.”

Phoebe drew a steeple on the white sheet of paper. “I just don’t feel right printing his name out,” she explained.

“I’m fond of Gus,” Po said. “But I guess if we’re doing this, we should do it right. He belongs up there with the rest of them. Max told me that Owen was calling for an audit of Gus’s books. He wanted to be sure he was contributing his fair share to the maintenance fund.”

GUS was added to the list.

“Who have we forgotten?” Kate asked.

“Well, if we’re adding the whole block,” Phoebe said, “I suppose we have to add Mary Hill as well.”

They were all silent. Happily married wives killing their terrific husbands was difficult for all of them to swallow. Dutifully, Phoebe wrote MARY on the chart.

“She inherited a bunch of money,” Maggie said.

“And I saw her chew out Wesley in the alley yesterday,” Selma said. “She was clearly upset with him.”

“Wesley may have stole something from her store,” Po said. “That may have been why she was angry.”

“What would Wesley want from an antique store?” Leah asked.

“One of those beautiful glass paper weights that Mary has on display.”

“Isn’t that what was thrown through Mary’s window?” Eleanor asked.

Po nodded but didn’t elaborate about how she knew Wesley stole the glass paperweight. She didn’t want to embarrass Phoebe and Kate by telling everyone about their adolescent adventure.

“Phoebe and I found a glass ball in Wesley’s truck Sunday night, the night before Mary’s shop was vandalized,” Kate announced, unabashed. “And I forgot to tell you, Po, but P.J. said they checked it out and, though Wesley may have stolen it from Mary’s, it wasn’t one of the expensive ones. It was the kind you buy at a fine gift store for forty or fifty dollars. But it was still quite beautiful, P.J. said, and looked a lot like those in Mary’s shop.”

Po’s mind was still on Mary. No one knew what went on between a husband and wife, but Po knew Mary cared deeply about Max. Just this afternoon she had met her coming out of his office. Mary explained she was taking some pictures up to the hospital, things that he might recognize, that might help reconnect him to the world if he comes out of the coma. All this while still dealing with her own pain.

Po frowned, trying desperately to put the puzzle pieces in place. Why would Wesley steal from Mary’s store? And more puzzling, why would he vandalize it later? She rested her head on her hands, her elbows on the tabletop and listened with half an ear to the gathering of suspicions and motive. It seemed the more information they pulled together, the less sense any of it made. But something was clearly missing. And they needed to discover it quickly before someone else was killed on Elderberry Road.

“Where’s Susan?” Kate said suddenly

“She wasn’t feeling very good. I sent her home,” Selma explained. “She hasn’t been eating much, and I think she’s run down. She needs a good night’s sleep.”

“Run down,” Phoebe repeated. “That brings us back to the truck piece of this puzzle. Daisy has a truck. But the others? I can’t quite imagine Mary Hill behind the wheel of an old beat-up pick-up.”

“Or the Reverend,” Eleanor said, reluctantly. “But it isn’t that hard to get your hands on a truck if that’s your goal.”

Kate raised her hand. “Phoebe, it might be time to call it a night. I’m brain-dead.”

Phoebe looked at her watch in mock frustration. “Oh, I suppose.”

But they had made great strides, they all agreed. And a night to sleep on it might be a good thing.

“Let’s all do a little snooping on our own,” Eleanor suggested.

“Good idea, El,” Phoebe said, collapsing her easel and leaning it against the back wall. “I’ll leave this right here. We can e-mail anything that comes up, but by Saturday we should have this solved. Right, Bees?”

They raised their hands in unison. “Right!” And so resolved, the Queen Bees departed for their own hives, pretending for the sake of one another that safety and peace were just around the corner.

When Po got home a short while later, she sat at her kitchen table and listened to a litany of phone messages — one from her daughter, telling Po that she and her husband and baby Jane were coming for Thanksgiving. She smiled. A joyful note in the middle of all this turmoil. Another message was from Peter, the thirteen-year-old boy who lived down the street. He didn’t have school tomorrow so he’d be over to mow the lawn, he told her, “like for probably the last time before winter.” Po smiled at the deep man-tone that had crept into little Peter’s voice when she wasn’t looking. The last one was a message from her editor saying the first few chapters were fine. An unexpected pang of disappointment passed through her. She stared at the answering machine, wondering what she had expected to hear. Had she thought there might be a voice-mail message announcing, “Your murderer is Colonel Mustard. He did it in the parlor with a candlestick?” Or P.J. calling with the news that they caught the guy at last — a stranger passing through town. Everyone was safe now.

Po looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Just eight o’clock. Still early. She glanced at the box of Sleepy Time Tea that Rita Schuette had given her. She had a feeling that sleep would drag its feet tonight and an extra strong cup of Rita’s tea might be a good thing.

Hoover was curled up in the corner of the kitchen on his flannel bed, content, safe. Po walked to the den, then back into the kitchen again. She wanted to grasp something tightly in her hands. And she felt so close to doing it. But when she reached for it, it slipped away.

She opened the refrigerator and a thin yellow light fell out across the floor.

Dinner. She hadn’t eaten any. Maybe that was the cause of this restless itch. This nagging in the pit of her stomach.

Behind the milk and orange juice on the top shelf of the refrigerator, Po found a large container of home-made chicken soup that she had taken out to thaw a day or so ago, then completely forgotten about. She felt the sides of the Tupper-ware container. Almost thawed. Perfect. Chicken soup, the perfect antidote for this uncomfortable gnawing inside her. “Chicken Soup for the Restless Soul.”