Touch-Me-Not (17 page)

C
HAPTER
31

The knitters met that evening, even though it was Saturday and the library was closed. The coral-reef quilt was laid out on the table, where they could all see it. Bright blue-and-yellow fish trembled on hidden wires above pink and purple anemones. Pale tentacles of anemones reached toward the fish. Brown kelp lay in deckle-edged ribbons. Brain coral, starfish, and woolly conch shells covered the purled sea floor.

Fran stopped knitting. She reached up and turned the page of the library’s wall calendar to June. “We don’t have much time,” she said. “Can we finish in just over two weeks?”

“Of course we can,” said Jessica. “We’ve completed the flora and fauna, and all we have to do is bind the edges of the quilt.”

“And pack it for shipping,” said Casper.

Fran dropped May back on top of June and picked up her knitting. “It’s a shame about finding that body. That delayed us a full afternoon.”

“I honestly don’t think the deceased feels any disrespect,” said Casper, looking over the top of his glasses at Fran.

“That hardly delayed us at all,” said Maron. “I mean, how often do you find a body? Seems to me that takes precedence over a knitted coral.”

“I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

“We don’t have any more than a week’s work to do.” Jessica held up the anemone she was working on. “This is my third and final one.”

“It’s going to take time to figure out how to stabilize the coral reef for shipping,” said Jim. “Can we tack it to a sheet of plywood?”

“The rules specify a quilt,” said Fran. “I think we’ve bent that rule a bit. As Mrs. Trumbull said, it would not be comfortable to sleep under.”

“Speaking of Mrs. Trumbull, has anyone heard any new developments?” Jessica turned to Elizabeth. “What does your grandmother have to say?”

“Victoria talked to me yesterday,” Jim said before Elizabeth had a chance to reply. “She’s interviewing everyone with any knowledge or interest in either Jerry Sparks or LeRoy Watts.”

“Both of them?” asked Jessica.

“She says the deaths are connected,” said Elizabeth.

“When Victoria spoke to me, she was circumspect,” said Jim. “She didn’t comment on her suspicions, and she was also sensitive.” He looked up from his knitting at Fran.

“Your daughter,” said Jessica.

“My daughter. Yes, Lily, my sixteen-year-old daughter. A kid. She was all excited about the Junior Prom, the way a kid should be. Nice boy, a junior, invited her. A pretty new dress.” He stared down at the lump of knitting in his lap. “Then everybody in school learned about the shower video. Kids started teasing her. She told the boy she wouldn’t go to the prom. Poor kid.” Jim jabbed his needle into his coral. The needle went through the coral and hit the palm of his hand. “Ouch! Damnation!” He tugged a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it against his hand.

“You didn’t bloody your coral, did you?” asked Fran with concern.

“My coral be damned!” Jim stood up, dropped his coral on his seat, and stalked out of the room.

“I’m afraid I said the wrong thing,” said Fran.

“I’m sure he’d have reacted the same way no matter what you said,” said Roberta.

Fran glanced at her watch.

Maron changed the subject. “I know our quilt isn’t really a quilt. But it’s for a good cause. It’s not as if we’re trying to win the Olympics or anything.”

Fran tilted her head to view their reef from a new angle. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “Simply wonderful. If this were the Olympics, we’d win a gold.”

Jim returned, smoothing a Band-Aid onto his palm. “Sorry. I overreacted.”

“No apology needed,” said Fran. “I’m being obsessive.”

“I can’t imagine that any other group is knitting a three-dimensional quilt.” Maron pointed her knitting needle at it. “Since we’re hoping to draw attention to global warming through our quilt, I think we will.”

“Point well taken,” said Casper with a smirk.

“You’re really not funny, you know?” said Maron.

“We’ll need two people to work on the binding,” said Fran. “What about you, Alyssa, and you, Elizabeth?”

“Sure.”

“Of course. Show us what to do.”

“And Jim, would you and Casper pack the quilt for shipping?”

Jim scratched his head with his needle. “Bubble wrap, I suppose. Roll the quilt up around a core of bubble wrap.”

“Whatever you think will protect it,” said Fran.

Elizabeth stood. “I’ve got to leave early. My mother’s visiting, and my grandmother has invited some guy to dinner. She’s trying to matchmake.”

“Has your grandmother commented any further on the situation?” asked Fran.

“Only that she believes that LeRoy Watts killed Jerry Sparks with his Taser, whether he intended to or not.”

“The police have been awfully quiet,” said Jessica.

Elizabeth packed up her knitting. “Gram told me they’re waiting for results from the autopsies and the forensics people. I don’t think the police have much to report at this time.”

“We’ll want a report back on her matchmaking attempt,” said Casper.

Bill O’Malley arrived promptly at seven, clean jeans, clean plaid shirt. “Do I smell Saturday-night baked beans?”

“Of course,” said Victoria.

“My favorite meal.” He handed Victoria a large bouquet of lilacs in a gallon plastic jug with the top sliced off. “Coals to Newcastle.”

“One can never have too many lilacs in the house.” Victoria arranged them in her grandmother’s ceramic cachepot and set it under the stairs, where the lilacs would perfume the front hall.

Elizabeth’s fisherman friend, Janet Messineo, had given her four large striped bass filets, and Elizabeth baked them with mayonnaise and fresh dill, served with Victoria’s Boston baked beans and lettuce from the garden.

Conversation started out formally between Amelia and Bill O’Malley—where they lived, what they did. After the first refill of their wineglasses, talk morphed into a discussion of books the four had read. After a second refill, conversation veered to local politics and issues.

Amelia was the first to talk murder. She sipped her third glass of wine as she spoke. “Can you believe,” she said to O’Malley, ignoring Victoria, “here’s my mother, in her nineties, involving herself in something so sordid as murder?” Amelia set her glass down.

Victoria set her own glass down firmly. Elizabeth looked first at her grandmother, then at her mother with even more concern.

O’Malley said, “You don’t understand Victoria.”

“What do you mean? She’s my mother.” Amelia ran her finger around the rim of her glass, making it sing.

O’Malley indicated Victoria with a nod. “Mrs. T., you’re not hard of hearing, are you?”

“Certainly not.” Victoria’s cheeks had bright spots.

Elizabeth still had a small piece of bass on her plate. She looked down and moved it around with her fork.

O’Malley set his knife on his plate and turned to Amelia, who was sitting on his right. “Since your mother hears all right, don’t you think it would be nice to include her in the conversation?”

Amelia flushed. Elizabeth looked up. Victoria smiled and looked down.

“Also, since we’re talking about your mother, don’t you think she’s capable of making her own decisions about her life?”

Amelia stopped running her finger around the rim of her glass. Her hands were shaking. She folded them out of sight in her lap. It took her a moment before she sputtered, “Who do you think you are!”

“A friend of Victoria’s, that’s who I am.”

Victoria coughed politely. Elizabeth glanced at her. O’Malley and Amelia continued their two-way conversation.

“What right have you to—” Amelia stopped and tossed her napkin onto the table.

“You haven’t seen your mother for a couple of years. Now you’ve dropped into her life with what seems to be a preformed image of how a ninety-two-year-old should behave. Well, that’s ageism, stereotyping, prejudice, and intolerance, all rolled into one. I suspect you weren’t brought up to be as intolerant as you sound.” O’Malley picked up his fork and dug into the remains of his fish. “This meal is too good for us to squabble.” He looked up with a grin. “Want to meet at dawn with drawn rapiers? Victoria and Elizabeth can be our seconds.”

Victoria said, “This fish is wonderful, Elizabeth. Cooked to perfection.”

O’Malley scraped his plate. “You don’t happen to have seconds of those beans, do you?”

“We do.” Elizabeth got up and went into the kitchen.

By the time she returned, Amelia’s face had regained its normal color and she was sipping the last of her wine. “Everything’s delicious, darlings, but I’ll pass on the seconds, thank you.”

Conversation veered away from the sensitive to the banal—the weather, the coming season, the garden.

“The touch-me-not I planted from wild seed may bloom this year,” said Victoria. “Did you know it’s an antidote for poison ivy?”

C
HAPTER
32

After supper, Elizabeth lighted the parlor fire. The fragrant smell of after-dinner coffee mingled with the homely smell of wood smoke. Victoria sat in her mouse-colored wing chair and O’Malley lowered himself onto the stiff couch. Conversation veered again to something more substantial than weather.

“Amelia and I interviewed Sarah’s sister Jackie this morning,” Victoria said.

“I was only an observer,” said Amelia.

“What did Jackie say for herself?” asked O’Malley.

“She blamed LeRoy Watts’s murder on her sister.”

The fire snapped and a live spark flew onto the rug. Elizabeth brushed it back into the fire with the hearth broom and returned to her seat.

“Have you talked to Sarah?” asked O’Malley.

“Sarah accused Jackie of the murder.” Victoria sipped her coffee, half-closing her eyes against the steam, and set her mug on the coffee table. “After we talked to Jackie, we met with Emily Cameron. Jerry Sparks was her boyfriend. It was his body we found in the book shed.”

“Have you come to any conclusions?”

“I’m more baffled than ever,” said Victoria.

The rain continued all day Sunday. It drummed on the cookroom roof, a soothing, cozy sound. In the morning, after braving the weather to pick up the Sunday
New York Times
at Alley’s Store, the three women worked together on the crossword puzzle.

“How on earth is anyone supposed to know the definition,” Victoria muttered, “for some British melodic death metal group? Ten letters starting with
N.
”

“Any letters in between?” asked Elizabeth.

Victoria was filling in the blanks. She studied the cross words. “The third letter might be a
v.
The last letter is probably an
e.
I suppose ‘death metal’ is considered music? What happened to Beethoven?”

“Death metal is the Shostokovich of the future,” said Amelia.

“I doubt it,” said Victoria.

“Neverborne,” said Elizabeth.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Victoria firmly inked in the word.

Monday morning was what Victoria called a “typical Vineyard day,” bright, sunny, and dry. She awoke early and went downstairs. Elizabeth had left a note on the kitchen table. “Short day today. Back around 2.”

Victoria stood at the top of the stone steps and breathed in the scent of the new day. Wind and rain had knocked blossoms off the maple trees during the night, and the ground was carpeted with bright chartreuse flowers that sparkled in the morning sunshine.

She went back to the kitchen and measured grounds into the coffeemaker. Soon the aroma of fresh coffee brought Amelia downstairs. “Morning, darling! A glorious day. What are your plans, more murder investigation?”

“Not this morning.” Victoria collected cereal boxes from the closet under the stairs and set them on the counter. “The State Police and forensics team are sifting through evidence. Casey is compiling a list of people she’d like me to talk to.” She lifted down two bowls from the cabinet above the counter.

“Shouldn’t the police be the ones to do the questioning?”

“I won’t be interviewing anyone in my police capacity,” Victoria said. “I’ll be talking to a few persons of interest, unofficially.” She removed the half-and-half from the refrigerator and set it on the counter. “The State Police and Casey believe I’ll be able to get certain types of information better than a uniformed officer, who, no matter how sensitive, can be perceived as threatening.” She reached down two mugs. “I plan to work in the garden this morning.”

After breakfast, Amelia joined her mother, and they worked companionably, pulling weeds from the rain-softened earth, occasionally talking, mostly quiet. The air smelled of fresh green growth. A catbird mewed from the cedar tree. Four polka-dotted guinea fowl strutted past them, the hen calling out a tiresome “Go back! Go back! Go back! Go back!” until Victoria hurled a clump of grass at her and the hen scurried off. Redwing blackbirds called. The honeybees from Neil Flynn’s hives hummed in the wisteria.

Amelia talked about her work, her travels, and the condominium she’d bought, which had a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. “I hope you’ll visit me this winter,” she said, looking sideways at her mother. Victoria listened with an occasional question. The morning passed pleasantly. Amelia carted the heap of pulled weeds to the compost heap while Victoria thinned the lettuce. Rain had spurred its growth.

That afternoon, Elizabeth and Amelia washed the tender lettuce Victoria had thinned. Victoria was in the cookroom, working on her weekly column.

“Would you like to come to the knitters’ group this afternoon, Mom?” asked Elizabeth. “We’re meeting every afternoon at four and,” she pushed up her sleeve to check her watch, “it’s three-fifteen now.”

“I’d love to go, darling. Where shall I put the roots I’m snipping off? Does your grandmother still have a compost bucket?”

Victoria looked up from her typewriter. “The compost bucket is under the sink.”

“Righto.” Amelia opened the door under the sink, swept a small heap of lettuce roots into her hand, and dropped them into the bucket. “Why on earth did you decide to form a mathematical knitting group, darling? That seems awfully esoteric.”

“It’s great fun, actually,” said Elizabeth. “A retired math professor started the group. She’s taken complicated equations for different shapes like Möbius strips and Klein bottles and projective planes and changed the equations into knitting instructions that we nonmath types can follow. I think you’ll like her. She’s about your age.”

“I look forward to meeting her,” said Amelia. “Math was one of my favorite subjects in college. I almost majored in it. What’s her name?”

Elizabeth lifted the freshly washed lettuce out of the sink and dropped it into the salad spinner. “Fran Bacon. She taught at Northeastern.”

“Really! Fran Bacon?” asked Amelia. “I wonder if she’s the same Fran Bacon I went to college with?”

“I think she graduated from the University of Massachusetts, too.”

“I didn’t know Fran Bacon well, but it seems to me she did major in math.”

Elizabeth ripped a paper towel from the roll above the sink and dried her hands. “Want to join us, Gram?”

“No, thanks. I need to finish my column. I’ll have supper ready when you come home.”

“You’ve had an awfully full day, Mother,” said Amelia. “You needn’t go to all that trouble. I’ll pick up some takeout in Vineyard Haven.”

“Thank you, but I’d prefer to make supper.”

Amelia sighed. “I’m trying to be helpful, Mother.”

“Enjoy the meeting,” said Victoria with a regal wave.

Elizabeth gathered together her knitting. “We’re off, Gram. See you a little after seven.”