Murders on Elderberry Road: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery (23 page)

“Of course they do, Mary.” Po tried to rise in her chair but Mary pushed her back with a swing of her pearl-handled gun.

“But what do you think they would do if they knew my husband was going to cut off the funds to the church and divorce me? How would that look, Po? They don’t make elders out of divorced women without money, ones whose husbands run off with cheap women.” She stood very erect and pulled her thin brows together. “They’d be feeling sorry for me. I’d be the one they prayed for on Sundays. I’d be poor, divorced Mary Hill. People would come in my store and point at me. How would that look, Po?”

Mary’s voice had risen so high that Po wouldn’t have recognized it if Mary hadn’t been standing in front of her, brandishing a gun.

“Mary, you have friends, no matter what. There’s Max …”

“Max Elliott is a fool,” she said sharply. “He agreed with Owen. Always, always. And he had the nerve to come to me at the store and show me her name on that deed.” Mary pointed at Susan, the tip of the gun inches from her face. “Foolishness. It belongs to the church, not Owen’s lover. Max was foolish and fickle. He said he was there to help me, and he wiped away my tears that day. And the whole time, he planned to see that she got the farm. He got what he deserved, foolish man.”

“But how did you …” Po started. Then she glanced at the photograph of the farm, and spotted the truck in front of the barn. A beat-up old truck that Owen used to lug around his fence posts and fertilizer. Mary. She’d taken that truck.

“I drove that truck right over Max,” she said proudly, following Po’s gaze. “He used to tell Owen and me about that old woman — how he used to eat her meatloaf every Thursday in that empty dismal restaurant. Such a foolish man. He has never been made an elder, you know.”

Po thought back to the day she and Leah had seen Mary crying in the store — the shadowy figure holding her, the crumbled paper in her hand when she had hurried down the street.

“And Wesley must have seen you, maybe the night you killed Owen?” Po asked.

“That snoop saw everything. He knew about Susan. She and Owen used to meet in the quilt store sometimes. In Selma’s back room. She was there that night after the meeting. They were making plans. I knew it. Wesley knew it, too. He sneaked around, drinking his liquor, making his slurs. Silly, useless man. I paid him off — a truck. But he kept wanting more.”

“The paperweight?”

Mary laughed. It was a hollow, eerie sound.

“A fake. I told him he could sell it someday for thousands of dollars, but he had to wait for the value to go up. Damn fool took it directly to a pawn shop, of all things. And they told him it wasn’t real. Of course I would never give that ugly man a Perthshire.”

“And us, Mary? Susan and me?”

“I stopped by Selma’s today and saw that chart you had put together. Those other girls won’t figure it out. They think Ambrose or Gus, maybe, or that crazy Daisy Sample. But you I don’t trust.” She pointed the gun at Susan. “And you? You are the cause of it all. He wanted to marry you!”

“Mary, the church can keep the farm,” Susan said, but she realized Mary wasn’t listening.

Po had seen the shadows fall over the windows behind Mary, then disappear. She saw the black hat and jeans, the sunny hair. And Kate, tall and gangly. Maggie and a flash of red hair. Selma, bless her heart. Leah brought up the rear and disappeared just before Mary looked out the window, then back to the two women in front of her.

“Mary, it won’t work,” Po said. She watched carefully and wondered if there had been other times, other instances, when she should have noticed the grave imbalance in Mary Hill.

Mary’s eyes were beginning to glaze over. She tried to focus. “Of course it will work. I am a very smart, very well-loved woman. I’m an elder in my church, you know.” She smiled brightly.

The door opened so quietly that Po thought for a moment Mary didn’t hear it. But then she turned, staring straight into Phoebe Mellon’s blazing blue eyes.

What happened in the next 60 seconds was a scene straight out of a Charlie’s Angels flick, as Phoebe described it to anyone who would listen.

As Mary spun around, Po raised one strong, well-exercised arm and snapped Mary’s slender wrist up higher than her head. The small pearl handled gun flew out of her hand, straight up into the air.

Eight heads followed its flight.

Mary lurched for control. And at that precise moment, the law of gravity kicked in and the gun fell soundly and surely into Phoebe’s waiting palm.

“Yahoo!” she screamed.

Mary, her face bright red, moved toward the door. Maggie and Leah and Kate, their legs stretched wide, blocked the way.

In the distance, sirens screamed their way through the quiet neighborhood.

“P.J.,” Kate beamed. And then she grabbed Po and hugged her close, tears streaming down her face.

It was springtime when the Queen Bees finished Selma’s Crystal Star quilt. By then the story had grown old, told and retold so many times that sometimes even the Queen Bees got mixed up on what really happened.

The papers said the police had found sound, incriminating evidence that Mary Hill had murdered her husband and Wesley, including a receipt for the hundred-dollar bills and the pint of Scotch. She’d thrown the rock that crushed Owen’s skull into Hans Broker’s backyard, where Hans had found it and used it to replace an old one in his small rock garden. Sparky finally unburied it, revealing the bloody edge. And the beat-up old truck, Owen’s own farm vehicle, had fingerprints galore, the paper said.

As for the final capture, Selma herself had played an important role. She’d been suspicious for weeks that Owen and Susan had a thing for each other. “You can’t be around it,” she admitted, “and not have a feeling.” But it was Susan’s business, and she left it alone, trusting that Susan would do the right thing.

But the day of the phone calls asking for Susan’s address — first Po, then Mary — worried her no end. And when Kate and Maggie came in with the news that Mary had bought the whiskey, and Leah remembered seeing the old truck out at Owen’s farm, they began to put the pieces together. Phoebe drew crossing lines on the white easel paper, and bingo — they had it.

Kate called P.J. to tell him their news and promised him they’d stay put. Then they flipped the closed sign on the front door of the shop, piled into Selma’s car, and the rest was Crestwood history.

Now, at last, after countless Saturdays spent sewing and not sleuthing, the anniversary quilt was finished, just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Quilt Shop. But they decided to have a private unveiling first, just the Queen Bees, and family, of course.

Susan insisted it be out at her farm. She had moved her mother and a nurse into the guesthouse behind the main house, and she lived alone in the spacious home that Owen had loved. Today the house was ready for her first guests: the ladies she trusted with her life.

Po and Kate busied themselves in the kitchen, putting out champagne glasses, small plates for the cake, and silverware and napkins. The others prepared the quilt in the great room, attaching it to a rod and covering it with a satin sheet. They had all seen it completed, of course, except for Selma, who had been excluded from the final binding.

“We’re ready,” Leah called out from the big room, as Owen had called it. Kate and Po gathered up the glasses and came into the room. Po stood on the porch and called to the others.

Jimmy and the twins, walking as straight as little rulers now, came in from feeding the horses, and P.J. poured champagne all around. Tim lit a fire in the fireplace to take the bite out of the air, then stood beside Leah while Po took center stage.

“We’ve so much to celebrate,” Po said. Everyone gathered around her. “First, to Life …”

The clink of glasses echoed in the air. “Here, here!”

“And healing,” Po said. They turned as one and lifted their glasses to the small quiet man sitting off to the side. Max was in a wheelchair now, and recovering every day. Po had been there visiting the day he woke up. After three months in a coma, he had rolled his head to the side of the pillow, looked Po in the eye, and said in a strong, clear voice: “Po, where’s my meatloaf? Food’s terrible here.”

Ambrose and Jesse had helped build a ramp for Max’s office after he was released from rehab, and he managed to show up for a couple of hours each day. In exchange, Max was helping them clean up all the discrepancies in their books that he and Owen had discovered. It was a second chance for them, designed to keep the IRS at bay — and Max would help them do it.

Po lifted her glass and met Max’s eyes. She smiled as glasses were raised in his direction.

“To Max.” Voices chimed and glasses clinked.

“And to friendship,” Po said, as the billowy drape fell off the quilt, and the room fell silent

Selma sat on the couch, right in front of the Queen Bees’ dazzling star quilt. Her eyes were moist as she looked at the millions of tiny stitches that held it together, the hours of chatter and tears and friendship that bound it as tightly as the deep purple binding.

In the center of the quilt was Susan’s contribution: magnificent beaded clusters of deep blue-black elderberries, their appliquéd stems standing out in relief.

As Selma reached out and touched it, Susan walked over and planted a big kiss on her cheek. Susan had begun teaching new quilting techniques in Selma’s back room — beading and ribbon appliqué and photograph transfers. The shop was alive with new art, and a public television station had even included the class, and the Queen Bees, in a documentary for public television.

The attention and the classes had brought new customers and revenue streams to Selma’s store, and the fiftieth anniversary was truly a celebration. The Elderberry neighborhood had taken on new life as it shook itself free of fear. The antique store was in new hands, and the young couple who bought it thought brick sidewalks were terribly dangerous. They also believed antiques should be seen, and had brightened up the store, adding a skylight in the very center. Daisy had finally agreed to an anger management class, and Selma went with her every Tuesday to make sure she didn’t skip. Leah and Susan helped her fix and paint the old window boxes, and at Christmas time, she filled them with tiny live pine trees and dozens of sparkling lights.

Gus and his wife Rita were helping plan Selma’s anniversary celebration, even inviting the mayor to make a toast. And Marla’s ovens had been humming for two weeks straight as she baked enough anniversary desserts to line Elderberry Road from one end to the other.

“A good day,” Po said to Kate as the evening at the farm wound down. They were standing side-by-side at Susan’s sink, their arms up to elbows in hot, soapy water.

Kate nodded. She shoved up the sleeve of her white blouse, leaving clusters of soap bubbles standing on her arm.

Po looked over at her goddaughter. Good day, for sure. And a good life. She lifted her arm from the sink of suds and pulled Kate close. Her eyes looked across the window and toward the sun sinking slowly behind the woods.

“See, Meg?” she said silently to herself. “I promised — and she’s still safe. Still sassy, still our girl. Stay tuned, dear friend.”

Sally Goldenbaum is the author of over two dozen published novels, including a mystery written with Nancy Pickard. She is an editor at a veterinary publishing company, mother of three grown children, and lives in Prairie Village, Kansas, with her husband, Don, two dogs, and a cat.

How To Make The Crystal Star 8” Block

From the background fabric, cut four squares using template A and four triangles using template C.

From the medium fabric, cut 12 triangles using template B.

From the light fabric, cut on square using template D.

Sew a medium B triangle to two sides of each C triangle making a flying geese unit. Make four of these units.

Sew a medium B triangle to each side of the D square.