Something's Knot Kosher (21 page)

C
HAPTER
1

I hefted my red tote bag stuffed with sewing supplies, and made my way across my best friend Lucy's newly landscaped front yard. Today was Tuesday, the day we always got together to quilt.

Peeking through a thick layer of redwood mulch were clumps of blues: pungent rosemary, English lavender, and cobalt salvia. Rows of giant white African Lilies on long stalks flanked the wide brick walkway. Dots of yellow kangaroo paws and red flax added more color, while pepper trees provided lacy shade. The water shortage in California was worsening, and homeowners in Los Angeles County were being encouraged to replace their thirsty lawns with drought tolerant plants. Lucy had opted for Mediterranean rather than Mojave Desert as a theme for her new garden. I pushed my way through the front door into the colorful interior of her living room.

“Hey, Martha.” My orange-haired friend Lucy waved me over to a blue easy chair. She wore pink linen trousers and a white cotton blouse. On her feet were blue espadrilles with three-inch wedge heels that boosted her height to over six feet. Even though she was in her sixties, Lucy carried herself like a runway model. This morning, she held a pencil and note pad instead of needle and thread. “It's time to plan Birdie's wedding.”

Our seventy-seven year old friend Birdie Watson wore her signature denim overalls, white T-shirt and Birkenstock sandals—a style acquired during her hippie days living on a commune. She looked up from her appliqué project and blushed. “At least I won't have to change my last name.”

Birdie's longtime husband Russell had been killed during a bank robbery last year. His death brought her back together with Russell's younger brother Denver, the man who had always been her one true love. Lately, the reunited couple divided their time between Birdie's house in Encino, and the Watson ancestral homestead in McMinnville, Oregon, where she was about to become a bride for the second time.

“Have the two of you picked a date yet?” I asked her. “How much time do we have to plan this thing?” I unloaded scraps of fabric from my red tote bag onto a coffee table made of burled tree roots. A black and white cowhide rug lay beneath the table. The décor of Lucy's house screamed Wyoming, where she and her husband Ray had grown up.

Birdie twisted the end of her long white braid. “Denny and I don't want a big fuss, Martha dear. We prefer a simple ceremony with all our family and friends. At our age, we don't have many of those left. So the sooner, the better.”

Just then the front door opened, and the newest member of our regular Tuesday morning quilting group breezed into the room. “
Bonjour
,” Jazz Fletcher sang in a very bad French accent. The six foot tall, fifty-something fashion designer crossed the room and claimed an empty space on the sofa beside Birdie, carefully placing his yellow tote bag on the floor next to his feet.

As usual, his chestnut brown hair was perfectly coiffed. My gray curls, on the other hand, were always a little chaotic. Even though Jazz was close to my age of 57, I'd never detected a single silver strand on his head. Apparently he had a close relationship with L'Oréal or Revlon.

Today he wore a yellow silk shirt with a banded collar tucked into ivory twill cargo pants with extra pockets at the calves and ankles. His sole accessories were small diamond studs in his ears, a thin gold watch and a gold wedding band encrusted with diamond baguettes. The wedding ring had come from his longtime lover, Russell Watson.

When Russell died, Birdie was finally free to reveal her husband's deepest secret. Russell was gay, and for the past twenty-five years he'd led a double life posing as a straight banker with Birdie as his wife, while also living with his much younger lover, Jazz Fletcher. When Jazz turned up after the murder, tenderhearted Birdie embraced him and invited him to join our group.

“Sorry we're late.” He reached inside the yellow canvas bag and removed his little white Maltese dog—Zsa Zsa Galore. She wore a yellow pinafore sewn with the same silk as his shirt and a rhinestone clip in her topknot. “I had a delivery to make this morning, but it turns out my client wasn't at home.” Zsa Zsa jumped off his lap and made the rounds, greeting each of us with a wagging tail.

“You left a message you were bringing a surprise. Do you have it with you?” asked Lucy.

Jazz bent down and extracted a sketch pad from a pocket in the dog carrier and grinned at Birdie. “I wanted to design the perfect wedding dress for you.
Et voila!
” He flourished a drawing of a white lace shift with bell-bottom sleeves and a skirt that ended mid thigh. He passed the image to Birdie. “I remembered seeing a 1960s photo of you in a dress like this. You had fabulous legs, so I thought, why not show them off again? It's very Mary Quant.” A satisfied smile split his face. “What do you think?”

Birdie's mouth fell open. She struggled to find the right words. “You've, um, done a beautiful job, Jazz.” Long pause. “But it's a little too, ah, youthful for me. My legs don't look like that anymore. I have terrible arthritis in my knees. I'm sorry dear, but there's just no way I'd ever wear a mini dress again. I prefer to cover my legs now.”

The more she spoke, the more Jazz's face fell. He slumped his broad shoulders and shrank back into the cushion of the caramel leather sofa, arms crossed and knees pressed together. When Birdie saw his reaction she added, “But you're such a talented designer, I'm sure this dress would be perfect for a younger person.”

As we worked on our individual quilts, Lucy served each of us coffee and thick slices of zucchini bread with walnuts and cinnamon courtesy of Birdie's excellent baking. This morning I sorted through the pile of random cotton prints I intended to cut into rectangles for my newest quilt. I chose a design called Prairie Braid which consisted of pieces sewn together in a herringbone pattern. This would become a true “charm quilt.”

Charm quilts were a special kind of scrap quilt—where no fabric was repeated. They were first popular during the nineteenth century when cotton calico became affordable and abundant. According to quilting lore, unmarried girls traded scraps of material in order to collect 999 different pieces. The thousandth scrap was supposed to come from the shirt of the young woman's future husband.

Shortly after he joined our group, Jazz had the brilliant idea of opening a business selling custom-made clothing and quilted bedding for dogs. His expert fingers busily sewed the finishing touches on an Irish Chain quilt that was much larger than usual.

“Who are you making that for?” I pointed to the green and white quilt cascading over his long legs. “Isn't it a little big for a dog's bed?”

He ended off his thread and cut a new length from a spool of green. “I've got a customer in Beverly Hills with an Irish Wolfhound. When the dog stands on his hind legs, he's nearly as tall as me.”

“Beverly Hills? So business must be good,” Birdie said.

Jazz threw his hands in the air and arched his eyebrows. “I can hardly keep up with the demand. I just finished an order for my manscaper, Dolleen Doyle.”

“Man what?” Birdie's eyes widened.

Jazz cleared his throat. “Manscaper. That's someone who specializes in male waxing. Dolleen's the best. She has a salon on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. I always see at least one movie star when I'm there.”

Birdie seemed mesmerized. “You get waxed?”

Jazz's cheeks colored. “After Rusty died, I sort of let myself go. But I started working out again and visiting her salon. One day, while she gave me a Brazilian, she ordered an extensive wardrobe for her Chihuahua, Patti. She also commissioned three coordinating dog carriers.”

“I didn't know you had expanded your line to include carriers,” said Lucy.

He shrugged. “Dolleen's just like me. She takes that dog everywhere with her. Even to work.”

Birdie laughed. “I'm surprised she didn't want quilts, too.”

Jazz wagged a forefinger. “
Au contraire
. Not only did she order quilts, she wanted four whole bedding ensembles. She asked me to rush the order. I agreed to deliver everything last night, but that didn't work out. Actually, I'm really annoyed.” He closed his eyes halfway and sniffed. “I drove all the way to the Valley from my boutique in West Hollywood to deliver everything at the time we agreed. But when I got there, she was gone. I could hear Patti barking inside, but Dolleen never answered the door. Frankly, I was surprised. I've never known her to be flaky. Just the opposite. She's a sharp businesswoman. Anyway, I ended up taking the entire delivery back home with me.”

“Why didn't you just leave the package on her doorstep?” asked Lucy.

“Oh no!” Jazz gasped. “You can't leave stuff on the porch anymore. Package pirates come by and steal everything. Don't you watch the news? Anyway, I thought I'd try again this morning. She lives in Tarzana, not that far from here, but she still wasn't home. I hung around for several minutes and tried calling and texting, but she wouldn't answer her phone. That's why I was late.”

The hairs on the back of my neck tingled. “You said she never goes anywhere without her dog?”

Jazz nodded.

“Yet she left the Chihuahua alone in the house last night? Even though she knew you were on your way over? And then again this morning?”

Jazz nodded again, this time more slowly.

I immediately thought of the time Lucy, Birdie, and I discovered the body of another quilter in her house, and—more than a year ago—how the body of yet another friend had lain undiscovered in her bedroom closet for ten months. I didn't want to alarm him, but a bad feeling gathered in the pit of my stomach. “Jazz, maybe you should try calling her again. Just to make sure she's not sick or something.” My bad feeling grew at the possibility of the woman lying helpless on the floor after a stroke, or worse.

His face turned pale and he stared at me. “Now you're beginning to scare me, Martha Rose.”

Lucy's head snapped up sharply and said just one word. “Martha!” But the tone of her voice spoke volumes. I clearly heard the caution and the
Oh no, not again
.

Birdie spoke quietly and twisted the end of her long, white braid. “Well, you have to admit, it does sound suspicious.”

Jazz punched his cell phone and waited. After a minute he ended the call and looked at me. “Nothing.”

I took a deep breath. “Since she's close by, maybe we should go over to her house and peek in the windows or something. If she's incapacitated, she'll need help.”

Lucy scowled. “Or maybe we ought to call the police instead, and have
them
check on her. After all, it's their job.”

I understood what she left unsaid. If we happened to stumble on yet another suspicious death, her husband Ray would
plotz
. The way he saw it, I'd put Lucy's life in jeopardy before, and I wasn't sure he had any room left to forgive me if it happened again.

Jazz put down the quilt and jumped off the sofa. “I'm going over there right now! I'll break down the door if I have to.”

At the sound of his outburst, Zsa Zsa trotted over to him and barked once. Jazz picked her up.

Birdie began putting her sewing things away. “I think we should go with Jazz. We'd never forgive ourselves if we knew this woman was in trouble and did nothing to help.”

Lucy sighed and slowly pushed up from her chair. “Okay, okay. But only to investigate from
outside
the house. If we discover something bad, we're calling the police. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Birdie and I responded together. Jazz merely pursed his lips.

The four of us piled into Lucy's vintage black Cadillac with the shark fins in back. Jazz leaned forward in the backseat and tapped Lucy's shoulder. “Take Ventura to Lindley and turn left.” Five minutes later we pulled into the driveway of a one story mid-century house just south of Ventura Boulevard. “This is it!” Jazz unbuckled his seatbelt even before Lucy turned off the engine.

We followed as he hugged Zsa Zsa to his chest and marched rapidly to the woman's front porch. Jazz pounded on the door and rang the bell. All we heard were the frantic yelps of one very small, very agitated dog. He turned to us with deep concern etched between his eyebrows.

We stepped sideways to a large picture window on the front of the house. A red sofa was pushed in front of the glass. A buff-colored Chihuahua stood on the back of the sofa and yipped at us. Then she raised her head, curled her lips, and began to howl. Zsa Zsa tensed, barked back, and looked at Jazz as if to say,
What are you going to do about this?

Jazz at six feet and Lucy even taller with those wedge heels had the best view of the home's interior. “Can you see anything?” I asked.

Lucy stepped back from the window and shook her head.

I pointed to the driveway. “Let's keep going.”

We hurried around to the side of the house and peered through a dining room window. Nothing. Farther down the wall we spied a kitchen window. It was too high for Birdie and me, but Jazz and Lucy could peek inside if they stood on their toes.

“Oh my God!” said Lucy. “She's on the floor.”

We ran around the corner to the back of the house looking for a door into the kitchen. Jazz didn't need to break it down. When he tried the handle it easily swung open. We rushed inside behind him, forgetting about our promise to call the police first. We stopped when we saw the blood.

Jazz rocked back on his heels and grabbed the granite counter for support. Zsa Zsa shook violently and whined so pitifully, he carried her outside, using the walls to steady himself. Birdie turned green and followed him into the fresh air. Lucy and I grasped each other for support. Patti looked at us from ten feet away and whined.