He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Maybe not. But looking back, I’m guessing snooping around the farmhouse wasn’t an accident. Does your sudden curiosity have something to do with Dolly Cayhill’s death? You failed to mention you were the one who dug up her body in your aunt’s backyard.”
Even if she’d tried to lie, the embarrassed flush creeping up her cheeks would have given her away. It didn’t help that the other shoppers in their immediate area had stopped to stare, and weren’t at all shy about eavesdropping on their conversation.
“If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Jeffries. I need to be going.”
When she tried to steer her cart around him, he sidestepped to block her escape. “You know, it’s bad enough that I’m going broke while everybody else takes their grand old time getting anything done. To make matters worse, the police chief decides to pay me a visit to find out how mad I was about that old woman throwing a wrench in the works.”
He leaned in closer. “The bottom line is that I don’t need you poking your nose into my business, too. Stay away from me, Abby McCree, and stay away from my property.”
Then he walked away without giving her a chance to respond. That was okay. She wasn’t sure if she could’ve come up with anything coherent to say. Several of the people who’d stopped to stare moved on down the aisles, but a few still remained motionless. Didn’t they have anything better to do? She picked up a can of green beans and studied the label as if it were the most fascinating reading she’d ever done. After dropping it into her cart, she started forward again, doing her best to ignore the whispered fragments of conversation behind her back.
“Is she the one who found . . .”
“Her dead aunt is the chief suspect . . .”
“That poor woman, thrown in a hole like she was a piece of trash.”
“What’s this town coming to?”
“What kind of person would do such a thing?”
For a relatively small grocery store, it took forever to reach the end of the aisle. She kept her head down and continued forward, wishing her eyes weren’t so blurry. She blinked to clear them. When that didn’t work, she dug through her purse to find a tissue to dab at her eyes. She opened them again only to realize that once again, a large man had blocked her way. Her heart did a stutter step. Hadn’t Frank Jeffries yelled at her enough for one day?
“Abby, are you okay?”
Thank God, it was Tripp, not Jeffries. Her pulse slowed and breathing became easy again. “I will be when I get out of here.”
He came around to her end of the cart and used his fingertip to wipe away a stray tear on her cheek. “What the heck happened now?”
It was tempting to lean in closer to his touch, but now wasn’t the time or the place. Taking a still-shaky breath, she tightened her grip on the cart. “Can we not talk about this right now?” Then she realized he’d set an empty handbasket down on the ground. “Really, Tripp, it can wait until you’ve finished your shopping. I’m okay now.”
Clearly, he doubted that, but he stepped out of her way. “I’ll stick close until you’ve checked out.”
While she appreciated his concern, she’d already drawn enough attention from the other shoppers for one day. At least the gossips had all scattered when he arrived. Even so, having Tripp tailing after her and glaring at anyone who got close wouldn’t help the situation. It took considerable effort to ease up her white-knuckled grip on the cart handle and offer up a small smile. “Seriously, Tripp, I’m on my way out. I’ll be fine.”
Mainly because she’d just seen Frank Jeffries walk out the front door of the store. Just in case, though, she’d keep a wary eye on him while she paid for her groceries, to make sure he actually left the parking lot.
Tripp turned to see what had caught her attention, but Jeffries was already out of sight. “Okay, but two things before you go.”
“Which are?”
He held up his forefinger. “One, I won’t be long. I just need milk and bread.”
A second finger joined that one. “And two, you will tell me who made you cry.”
Then he walked away, once again leaving her staring at his broad back. That had become a habit with him, one she didn’t much appreciate. It was tempting to call him on it, but for now it was better to opt for discretion. There would be plenty of time to fight it out with him when he got home.
And for the record, there was no way she was going to warn Tripp that his fan club would be on hand to watch him mow the lawn. With that happy thought, she headed for the checkout line.
* * *
Abby wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed that Tripp had managed to finish mowing the front yard before her fellow board members arrived. She knew how the ladies felt about it, though. All three of them had found a surprising number of excuses to venture into her kitchen, which offered a clear view of where he was working in the backyard.
“I’m going to get another glass of water. Does anyone else need anything?”
Abby’s conscience belatedly kicked in, and she decided to get the water herself. She started to reach for Louise’s empty glass, but then changed her mind. “Let me get it for you. In fact, I’ll fill a pitcher with ice water since you all seem to be extra thirsty today.”
The three women couldn’t quite hide their disappointment, but too bad. Tripp wasn’t performing for their entertainment. Or hers, either, but that didn’t keep her from peeking out the window to see how he was progressing on the yard. Another few laps and he’d be done. Hopefully, the pitcher of water would last long enough to afford him some privacy.
She’d managed to avoid the talk he wanted to have when he got home from the store, claiming that the imminent arrival of her guests prevented her from having time. He’d settled for a postponement, not a cancellation. It wasn’t likely to be a fun conversation anyway, but his being ogled again by the quilting guild wouldn’t help the situation.
On the way out of the kitchen, Abby grabbed the rest of the cookies off the counter to replenish the plate on the dining room table where they were working. She wasn’t particularly hungry for any herself, but it might eliminate another possible excuse for the ladies to wander back in that direction.
After topping off everyone’s glass, she sat back down at the head of the table. “So, where were we? Glenda, I think you were up next. Can you tell us where we are on the budget for the next year?”
She suspected the group wasn’t used to following a set agenda for their meetings, but she was doing her best to hold them to it. There would be plenty of time for idle conversation afterward if they had other things they wanted to talk about.
Glenda dutifully reviewed her notes with them. “The extra money from the garage sale will help make up the shortfall on our projected budget.”
She looked up from the page she was studying. “We should still have enough to purchase the necessary supplies for the small quilts we wanted to make, but we won’t be able to increase the number over last year’s production. While some of us are in a position to make up the difference from our own fabric stashes, that isn’t true for some of our members.”
Jean fiddled with her pencil, making Abby wonder if she was one of the quilters who did so on a shoestring budget, not that she was about to pry into the woman’s finances. On the other hand, why was there a significant shortage in the projected budget? Their membership had remained more or less stable, with enough new members to offset the few who had left the group, so the amount taken in from dues wouldn’t account for it.
She’d read through the minutes from past board meetings when she’d agreed to take over Aunt Sybil’s term in office, but they weren’t all that helpful. Some months, there hadn’t been any minutes at all. In others, the notes were little more than the date and who had attended. The regular group meetings where they got together to tie the lap quilts or pick out fabrics to start new ones were more social gatherings than organized meetings. No one ever took attendance or wrote up minutes.
&n
bsp; It wouldn’t do to say something that might be taken as a criticism. After all, the members of the guild could run their affairs any way they wanted to. After shuffling through a stack of papers that wouldn’t contribute anything useful to the conversation, Abby set them back down.
“With everything that’s happened, I’m not quite up to speed on what the budget was expected to be, and I apologize for that. Other than dues and the garage sale, was there another source of funding that I’m not aware of ?”
Glenda, Jean, and Louise all exchanged looks, maybe deciding whose tale it was to tell. It wasn’t a surprise when Glenda sighed and then began speaking.
“Some of this might be hard for you to hear, Abby, and I apologize for that.”
Glenda paused as if waiting for some kind of response from her, but Abby didn’t know what to say. For one thing, she couldn’t possibly imagine what might upset her about the guild’s finances. She’d only been part of the group for a short time. Reaching for a cookie she really didn’t want, she smiled at the older woman. “Don’t worry about it, Glenda. I’ll be fine.”
Crossing her fingers that was true, she took a healthy bite of the oatmeal cookie and settled back to listen.
“I think we talked about it a little at the garage sale. Do you remember that movie a few years back about the women in England who put together a calendar to raise money to buy a comfortable sofa for the hospital?”
Jean broke in to say, “Theirs was pretty racy.”
Glenda rolled her eyes. “Yes, Jean, it was. We all thought so, but it was for a good cause.”
“That didn’t change the fact it was scandalous.”
“Am I telling this story, or are you?”
Jean hunched her shoulders at the rebuke. “Sorry, I was trying to help.”
Abby fought to be patient while they worked out their problems. At the same time, she was struggling very hard not to picture what the various members of the guild would look like while posing for “racy” photos, good cause or not. It was all she could do not to shudder at the pictures her overactive imagination was producing.
After giving Jean one last quelling look, Glenda launched back into her story. “We really wanted to do more for the community, you see. There are so many good uses for the kinds of quilts we make to give away. Even though the patterns are simple ones, the bright colors are cheery. I know we’ve told you that nursing homes use them for lap quilts, and the police and fire department like to give them to children along with a stuffed animal when something bad happens.”
“I can see how much that would mean to folks.”
“We all pay dues, of course, and we considered raising the amount. However, that might have meant some members wouldn’t have been able to renew. We didn’t want to do that to them, and we know a few would walk away before they’d let someone else pay for them. The garage sale provides the bulk of our income, but this is the first really successful sale we’ve had in years. That left us floundering for what other fundraiser we could do that some other group in town wasn’t already doing.”
With fewer than two thousand living there, it was easy to see how that could be a problem in a community the size of Snowberry Creek. From what Abby could tell, there were a lot of local groups all vying for the same pot of money—church groups, the schools, the quilting guild, not to mention all the other national charities.
“Anyway, back to the movie. We had a girls’ night last fall with pizza, ice cream, and all kinds of goodies.”
Louise broke in for the first time. “Do you really think Abby cares what we had to eat that night?”
Glenda looked as if she’d like to argue the point, but she got right back on track. “We were amazed how successful those ladies were with their calendar, and Sybil asked why we couldn’t do something similar.” She quickly glanced at the other two older women, maybe to forestall any more interruptions. “Nothing like what they did, of course. But maybe a calendar that featured our most special quilts. The only downside was that there would only be thirteen slots available. One for the cover and then one for each month. Jean came up with the idea that to make sure the entire guild was represented, the cover would be the quilt that we all worked on. You saw it when we sold chances for it at the garage sale. At that time, we all thought that was clever thinking on Jean’s part, because it would let all of our members participate.”
Abby smiled at Jean to acknowledge her genius suggestion. Meanwhile, Glenda paused for a sip of water. Evidently, telling a saga was thirsty work.
“Sybil agreed to do some investigating to see how much it would cost to have a calendar designed and printed. We knew we’d also need a professional photographer to do the pictures. There was no use in doing the project if we weren’t going to do it right. All of that would cost money, but there wasn’t any extra in the budget to cover any additional expenses. In the end, we decided that the first twelve people who paid a set fee would have their quilts included in the calendar.”
Again, smart thinking. The more well-to-do members could provide the initial outlay of money, but the cover would make everyone feel included. It would be interesting to know who all had stepped up to buy a page on the calendar. From what had already been said, Abby was willing to bet that her aunt, Glenda, and Louise had ponied up. Was Dolly Cayhill another member of that select group? Not that it mattered at this point.
“As it turned out, Julie Tolbert, one of our newer members, had studied photography in college. Although she hadn’t done any professional work in recent years, she had a few things published in magazines and such when she was younger. She offered to bring her camera to our next meeting and take a few sample pictures so we could see the quality of her work.”
When Glenda drifted to a stop again, Louise jumped in to pick up the thread of the story. “The photos she took of one of my quilts with her digital camera were lovely. I even framed them to hang in my sewing room. They were that good.”
She paused to dig her cell phone out of the depths of her purse. After bringing up the pictures in question, she passed the phone around so everyone could admire the JPEGs of the shots. Even with the small size of the screen, it was easy to see that there had been a lot of thought put into the lighting and how the quilt was draped to show the pattern at its best advantage.
Handing the phone back, Abby said, “These pictures are great. She’s clearly a talented photographer, but don’t forget she also had great subject matter to work with. I love the colors in your quilt.”
Louise beamed with pride. “Thanks. I designed that pattern. It was some of my best work, if I do say so myself.”
Louise’s smile didn’t last long, as if that last comment had taken the wind out of her sails for some reason. In fact, all three women looked pretty glum. “So, why did the guild decide not to go forward with the project?”
There was another long exchange of looks between the other three ladies before Glenda finally answered. “It wasn’t our decision, not exactly anyway. Julie moved away unexpectedly.”
So why not hire another photographer? Of course, maybe there hadn’t been time to find one and still get the calendar designed and printed in time. But judging by everyone’s grim expression, the reason was something far worse.
“What happened?”
Glenda picked up her budget paperwork and shoved it back into a file folder. “We all trusted Julie, you see. She might have been a recent addition to our group, but several of our members knew her through church. When she asked if we’d bring the quilts to her house to photograph, we didn’t hesitate. Sybil and I picked up all twelve of the quilts that were supposed to be in the calendar. We asked everyone to wrap their quilts in some way so we couldn’t see them. That way, no one but Julie would know what the quilts looked like for sure until she was ready to share the pictures with the whole group. We were still working on the cover quilt, but Julie said that was all right. She could do that one last to give us the extra time to finish it.”
The slight tr
emble in Glenda’s hand made it clear that they’d finally reached the dark moment in the story. “She’d said it would only take a few days to take all the shots. That sounded reasonable to us, but we did tell her to take longer if she needed it.”
Louise interrupted. “I don’t mean to contradict you, Glenda, but what she actually said was that she only had a few days to take all the shots. Something about Troy being due back home soon, and they were thinking about taking a short trip. I think she intended to take all the pictures and return the quilts before they left.” Then she glanced at Abby. “He’s one of those long-haul truck drivers. You know, the kind who is gone for days at a time.”
Glenda frowned and then slowly nodded. “I don’t remember it quite that way, but you may be right. Dolly and I were busy making a list of possible sponsors for the calendar as well as possible retail spots where we could sell it.” She frowned. “Regardless, we didn’t think anything of it when three weeks went by without us hearing from her. But when she didn’t come to our next monthly meeting, I tried calling her. It went straight to voicemail, so I left a message. I know Sybil tried again a few days later. Dolly was concerned, too.”
Jean reached for another cookie. “It was right about then that I heard from a mutual friend that Julie had run off with another man, leaving that nice husband of hers. They’d been married for over twenty years, and Troy had no idea she was so unhappy. The poor man was devastated, and I don’t blame him. I can’t even imagine walking out on my husband like that. You’d think if they’d been together that long, their marriage would’ve been rock solid.”
Not necessarily, but Abby wasn’t going to argue the point. Considering her recent experience with her own ex, she might not be the most impartial judge of what constituted a rock-solid marriage these days. “So what happened to the quilts?”
Jean sighed. “No one knows.”
Louise studied the photos of her quilt one last time and then shoved her phone back into her purse. “We asked Troy, but he didn’t know anything about them. Julie had never mentioned the quilts or our project to him, and they weren’t anywhere in the house. All we can figure is that Julie took them with her.”
Death by Committee Page 12
