Threads of Deceit (Vineyard Quilt Mysteries Book 1) (11 page)

“It’s not that. George and I were supposed to meet for dinner in town, but he never showed.”

“And I’ll assume he never called to tell you why.”

Daniel nodded. “Not showing isn’t really unusual. He was excited about something to do with the mud we were bringing up with the digger. When George is caught up in a geological wonder, he’ll forget there’s a world around him, but I did think he’d call eventually to tell me what kept him. It’s too dark to be playing in the dirt now.”

“Maybe you should call him?”

“I did, but he’s not answering.”

“And you’re worried.”

“Maybe a little.”

Julie assumed that meant he was very worried but didn’t want to admit it. “Why don’t we drive out to the farm right now? You can show me whatever you’ve uncovered, and we can check on George at the same time.”

“I’m not sure the mud-covered paddle wheel will be very exciting in the dark, but I’ll take you up on it anyway. Let me get my shoes.”

Once they arrived at the farm, Julie was reminded again of how incredibly dark night could be in the country. In the city, she sometimes had to search for shadowy places to hide
when she was on a job. In the country, she could have carried off a calf and no one would have seen her, especially on a cloudy night like the one they faced as they bumped along the dirt lane in Daniel’s truck.

“When we see George, pretend we came out here to show you the dig site,” Daniel said. “I don’t need to be called mother hen for the next month.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Julie said, then added a soft cluck just to make him laugh. She leaned forward to peer out the truck window. “You know, you might have fewer prowlers around the site if you kept some lights on.”

“We usually do,” Daniel said. “I don’t know why we’re not seeing them yet.”

Finally they ran out of dirt road. He shut off the truck’s headlights for a minute, and they peered out at the uninterrupted blackness of the night. “There’s no good reason for George to shut off those lights.”

Daniel turned the truck’s headlights back on so they could see to approach the dig site. He carried a long, heavy flashlight as well. “Stick close to me,” he said. “The ground is a mess, between the big machines gouging up the mud and the gawkers tracking it around everywhere.”

Julie didn’t answer, though she had no intention of wandering far from the flashlight’s beam.

“Someone has turned off the pumps,” he said.

“Why?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea.” When they got close to the excavation, Daniel darted his flashlight beam into the hole, and the light reflected back from the murky water. “Terrific. We’ll have to run them all day to clear the water enough to be able to dig tomorrow. George would never have let anyone do that.” He turned in a slow circle
and shouted his friend’s name. He got no answer.

Daniel walked carefully around the dig hole. They found uprooted stakes and two work lights with the glass broken out. “Vandals. Like we don’t have enough trouble.” Again he shouted his friend’s name to no avail. “I don’t like this.”

“Try his phone,” Julie said. “If someone knocked him out, he could be lying anywhere beyond the flashlight beam.”

As soon as Daniel had punched in his friend’s number, they heard a ringtone in the darkness. Despite her worry, a smile tugged at Julie’s lips as she recognized the theme song from
Indiana Jones
.

They followed the ringtone to a point some distance from the dig and found the phone half buried in a clump of frost-wilted grass.

“You know,” Julie said hesitantly, “the phone could have fallen out of George’s pocket if someone knocked him out and dragged him.”

Daniel stared into the darkness between them and the distant river. “I hope that’s not the case, but I’m calling the police. None of this looks good.”

While they waited for the police to arrive, Daniel checked on the pumps. It turned out they hadn’t been vandalized, merely shut off. He started to flip the switch to turn the pumps back on when Julie put a hand on his arm. “You probably shouldn’t mess with anything until the police get here. They’ll want to see it all the way we found it.”

He turned worried eyes toward her. “You think something bad has happened to George?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t want to. I want to think he lost his phone and went off to a late supper.” Daniel clenched his fist in frustration. “I want his car to come rumbling down that dirt road right now.”

“Maybe it will.” Julie couldn’t infuse enough enthusiasm in her tone to make it sound like she believed that.

In the dark, it was difficult to sense the passing of time. When the chilly breeze touched Julie’s face, it smelled of a combination of mud and autumn. In the weeks since Daniel had come to Straussberg, autumn had crept in with Julie barely noticing. She’d grown used to the historian and his excitement about the dig. Now she felt the worry and tension emanating off him.

Finally lights appeared on the dirt road, but it wasn’t George—it was the police. Julie was impressed with the efficiency with which they asked questions and began setting up lights to search the area. The truth was, she hadn’t expected the officers to be so professional since they were from the slower pace of the Missouri wine country. But she’d been very wrong. She scolded herself for being such a city girl.

Daniel showed a policeman where he’d found the phone. “You don’t suppose he dropped it there when someone attacked him?”

The officer set a marker in the mud where Daniel directed. “I don’t see any blood or sign of a struggle here, so if he was attacked, I don’t think this was the spot.”

A sudden shout from the excavation site drew their attention. One of the officers was shining a light into the excavation hole itself. Daniel reached the edge of the hole before Julie and shouted George’s name, his voice thick with grief and shock. Julie caught a glimpse of a body floating in the muddy water before officers herded both Daniel and her away from the edge.

Everything became a blur of action then as George’s lifeless body was recovered from the hole and sent off in an ambulance. Julie watched the rush of movement, but with
the dark pressing at the edge of all the portable lights, it all seemed unreal. Why would anyone hurt George? He was such a nice, cheerful guy.

She brushed her cheek and realized she was crying. She wiped the tears away, then looked down at her damp fingers. Julie Ellis
didn’t
cry. She wrote it off to exhaustion and shock. She had seen a lot of rough scenes in her life, but this was her first murder, and it was someone she liked. Her attention sharpened as she heard Daniel raise his voice to a man in a rumpled suit. She drifted toward the conversation.

“You can’t think I had anything to do with George’s death,” Daniel said. “He was my best friend!”

“And you had no disagreements?” the man asked blandly. Julie realized he must be a police detective. She eased a bit closer, careful not to catch his eye.

“Everyone has disagreements.”

The detective looked up from making his notes. “That sounds like yes.”

Daniel shook his head. “It shouldn’t. George sang while he worked.” Daniel managed a single chuckle while he thought about it. “He made up his own lyrics, and they were always terrible and distracting. So I complained, but it was halfhearted. Truth is, I always wanted to hear what nonsense he would come up with next.” At that, Daniel’s face seemed to slip, as if the skin had suddenly grown tired. His eyes looked dark and hollow in the artificial light. “I don’t know why anyone would want to kill George.”

The detective nodded, though Julie didn’t see a speck of sympathy on his face. “These questions are just routine. Can anyone confirm when you left Winkler Farm this evening?”

“Maddie maybe,” Daniel said. “She was cleaning up the farm stand, and I waved as I drove out.”

“Maddie Winkler?”

Daniel nodded.

The detective continued to ask more and more questions, and none of them sounded routine. Suspicion rolled off the man like fog from the river. He clearly believed Daniel had killed his friend. He was merely trying to work out why.

Julie walked over to the two men. “Did George drown?”

The detective’s gaze turned to her sharply. “And you are …?”

Stupid
, Julie thought. She did not need this man’s attention. “I’m the innkeeper at the Quilt Haus Inn. Mr. Franklin is staying at the inn. And
you
are …?”

“Detective Frost.” He cocked his head, like a hawk eyeing his prey. “Do you visit farms in the dark with all your lodgers?”

“That
would
be an odd activity,” Julie answered with a nervous laugh. “Though I’d like to think any of my guests could count on me in an emergency. They’re all away from home, after all. That’s what lodging at an inn usually means.”

“Was George Benning staying at your inn too?”

Julie shook her head. “He was staying out here at the farm. There had been incidents, vandalism on the dig site.”

“And you knew this because?”

“Mr. Franklin told me.” Then Julie smiled tightly. “Though he’s not the only one I heard it from. Straussberg is a small community and very friendly. That can translate into everyone knowing your business, as you are probably aware, Detective Frost.”

He dipped his head slightly in acknowledgement of what she said. Then he turned to look at Daniel again. “I’ll have more questions when I hear back from the coroner. You’ll need to stay in Straussberg for the duration of the investigation.”

“I don’t plan to go anywhere. My excavation is here.”

The detective nodded. “We will, of course, need to secure this site while we investigate.”

“I assumed that would be the case,” Daniel said. “And I hope you plan to extend your list of suspects beyond me. Someone killed my friend. I hope you’ll look long and hard to find out who.”

The detective kept his steely gaze firmly on Daniel. “I will find the killer.” Though he didn’t say anything more, Julie could practically hear the words in the man’s head. He believed he’d already found the killer, and he believed it was Daniel Franklin.

A
fter being up half the night at the dig site, Julie slept through her alarm in the morning. She woke in a panic and didn’t even take time to tame her curls before heading downstairs. She found Shirley at the front desk, beaming at her. The cheerful woman’s cloud of red hair was covered with a bright blue crocheted cap that matched the bluebirds appliquéd onto her quilted jacket. “Hannah asked me to watch things a bit.”

Julie made a silent promise to get something nice for her best friend as she thanked Shirley. “Did you have any problems?”

Shirley shook her head. “No one checked in or out.” Then she leaned closer to whisper. “I heard about the horrible goings-on out at the Winkler farm.”

“What did you hear?” Julie asked, dreading the reply.

“That historian fella went crazy and killed his friend.”

“He did not!” Shirley’s shocked face suggested Julie had snapped a little harshly. She softened her tone. “Mr. Franklin was away from the site when Mr. Benning died.”

“Oh,” Shirley said, disappointment clouding her features. “But someone
did
kill him?”

“The police didn’t say. George was found in a flooded excavation hole in the pitch dark. It’s possible he simply fell in. The mud is so slick, he might not have been able to get back out.” Julie didn’t think for a moment that’s what had happened, but if she was going to have the hub of the gossip network working for her, she might as well use the woman to quell the more lurid rumors.

“Oh, how horrible.” Shirley’s round eyes made it clear she was imagining the struggle herself.

“I’m sure the police will figure it out eventually.”

The front door opened and a short, round woman with close-cropped gray hair walked in leading a rolling suitcase like a dog on a leash. She was followed by a much taller man who looked around at the hanging quilts with the misery of someone who isn’t looking forward to the next few days. As Shirley scampered back to the tearoom, Julie turned a warm smile toward the new guests, welcoming them to the Quilt Haus Inn.

Julie’s morning quickly filled with the normal requirements of her job, but her focus kept straying back to that dark hole on the Winkler farm. With George dead, the mysterious call to buy the farm took on an ominous tinge. She would love the chance to look around the excavation site in the daytime, but she knew better than to tromp around a crime scene—especially in broad daylight. She wanted the police to look beyond Daniel for the murderer, but she’d rather they didn’t look at her.

When she finally took a break to grab a sandwich in the kitchen, she was surprised to find Daniel chatting with Hannah while she showed him how to make
kuchen
, a cross between a small cake and a tart that was very popular in the tearoom. They both wore long white baker’s aprons with “Quilt Haus Inn” stenciled on the bib.

“You know this part of the inn isn’t public,” Julie said.

Daniel gestured with the apple peeler. “I know. I’m hiding. Since I can’t go out to the site, I’m stuck for something to do. I tried reading some local history in your library. You have quite a nice collection, by the way. But the lady from the tearoom kept popping into the library and staring at me.”