Barbara Graham - Quilted 03 - Murder by Music

by Barbara Graham

Claude's home was a former shack, set well off the road and behind a stand of immense old cucumber trees, about half way between the dump and town. With the recent large addition to his home, Claude had more than doubled his living space.

  The television was loud enough to hear from the road, so Tony pounded on the frame of the warped screen door. He wanted Claude outside and downwind. The man wasn't famous for his aftershave. After several minutes he succeeded in rousing Claude.

  A bleary-eyed Claude stepped carefully through the doorway. Clutching an empty jelly glass decorated with dinosaurs, he joined Tony in the center of the yard.

  The midnight blue car/truck he had made from a 1989 Crown Victoria was the centerpiece of his salvage display. What had once been the trunk was now the open bed, and the back seat was now a piece of lawn furniture sitting in the shade near the house. Somehow he had managed to cut the thing apart and then splice it together again, creating a functional car/truck.

  Tony sniffed the air, expecting Claude's usual aroma of sweat and garbage. He was surprised when he smelled detergent and perfume. “Do you usually carry a gun with you on your travels around the county?”

  “All the time in the dump truck.” Claude's eyes rolled and he cleared his throat. “There's ugly things out at the landfill.”

  Tony smiled then, a real smile. He could imagine the truth in that statement. “What caliber?”

  “Got me a twelve gauge and a .357 Magnum I take along with me. Don't want to take chances, ya know. Them skunks have rabies.”

  “How about a .22?” Wade asked.

  “No way.” Claude belched. “Then the rats would have bigger guns than me.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Tony and Wade headed for the Blazer. “Talk to you later, Claude.” Tony turned back, thinking he'd ask Claude to keep an eye out for the miscreants shooting holes in every sign in the county—with a .22 and hoping to frame Claude. The question died in his throat as he watched a stunning woman with short dark hair, dyed hot pink on top, join Claude in the yard. Her thin robe of bright pink flowers on a black background blew open just as she wrapped her arms around Claude and led him toward the house.

  Next to him, he heard Wade exhale sharply. Tony grinned. “I'd say the mail order bride is working out just fine.”

  Tony took the whole family to Ruby's Café for dinner. On a good day, Theo wasn't much of a cook. After a long day at work, it was often much easier to eat out. Especially now, when standing for any period of time exhausted his wife.

  “Why do you go to retreat?” Jamie began his interrogation.

  “It's relaxing.” Theo ran a hand over the boy's hair, smoothing the cowlick only to watch it spring up again. “It's like scout camp for quilters.”

  To an almost seven-year-old, camping was chasing squirrels and tossing rocks in the creek. Jamie was not seeing any connection to quilting. “What do you do all day?”

  “Since it's a vacation for quilters, we don't have to do anything. There is no schedule, no housework, no husbands or kids, and the meals are provided. Everyone is free to concentrate on quilting, or sleeping or daydreaming or hiking, as long as they have brought a quilt for their bed.”

  “Are you teaching there?” Chris wasn't about to let his little brother hog the whole conversation, and he did understand Theo sometimes went out of town to teach.

  “No. Some retreats have classes, but ours is just for relaxing.This one will have a short embroidery class, and I'll have the clues to a mystery quilt to hand out, but no one has to make one.”

  Jamie yawned and didn't cover his mouth. “Sounds boring.”

  “I'm glad I don't have to go,” said Chris. “I heard there isn't any television up there.”

  Jamie stopped scraping the meringue off his pie and looked at his brother. “I guess Dad's going to cook.” His expression turned mournful and Chris's mirrored it.

  “Is there something wrong?” said Tony. He wanted to laugh at their faces but managed to contain himself and pasted a wounded expression on his own face instead of a grin.

  “W-ell,” Chris looked uneasy. “I guess it's pretty good when you use a recipe.”

  “Okay, I promise I'll use a recipe. Now finish eating so I can drop you all off at the house. I've got work to do.” He looked at Theo's raised eyebrows but didn't volunteer any information.

  Tony drove to Mr. Beasley's home, hoping to find a neighbor who could answer some of his questions. His arrival startled three young men grouped on the porch, and he turned his spotlight on the trio. Davy Farquhar's three “darlin' boys.” Boys no longer in Tony's mind. He spoke into his radio. “The Farquhar boys are at Beasley's house. I want extra patrols by here until further notice.”

  Although there was still some daylight, the shadows were lengthening, and he left the spotlight shining. The Farquhar boys turned and shaded their eyes with their hands. The three young men appeared interchangeable with similar unkempt dark hair, green eyes, medium build and zero work ethic. “What are you boys doing here?” He'd bet none of them was given a key by Mr. Beasley.

  The one standing closest to the door stuffed something into his pocket while the other two moved to shield him. “We heard he's dead and we come by for our money.”

  Tony doubted the boys were owed anything. “You in the will?”

  “Don't need one. We're kin—it comes to us automatic-like.” The three shaggy heads bobbed in unison.

  “Go home. All of you.” Tony walked toward them. “If you get money, it will come later from his lawyer. In the meantime, you stay away from this house or I'll throw all of you in jail.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning, Tony opened the door to his office and froze. For a moment he thought it had been taken over by a giant canary wearing an orange wig, but quickly realized it was Blossom dressed in bright yellow sweatpants and sweatshirt. She waggled her fingers to catch his eye. Like that was necessary.

  Tony had to smile at the sweet woman. She certainly didn't intend to be irritating as poison ivy. “Are you feeling better, Blossom?” He would have preferred to find her sitting out in the waiting area rather than in his office, but he knew why she was sitting there even before she said anything.

  “Ruth Ann said I was to sit right here and not to touch nothing.”

  Her eyes were still watery, and she sniffled into her hand making Tony hope she had a tissue hidden in there. He glanced around but didn't see a pie sitting on his desk. She often brought him one, and he had to fight back a surge of disappointment. “Can I help you with something, Blossom?”

  “What happened to Mr. Beasley?” Blossom reached into a frog-festooned shopping bag at her feet, extracted a roll of toilet paper, unwound a few feet of it and blew her nose. She dropped the roll in the neighborhood of her bag and missed. It rolled to Tony's feet.

  Tony picked it up and handed it back to her. “Mr. Beasley probably died of old age, but all the tests aren't in.”

  “I don't suppose I'll get paid now.”

  Tony felt bad because he hadn't considered her finances. Blossom worked at Ruby's cooking desserts, and she did birthday and wedding cakes as well as light housekeeping and meals for several seniors, one less now. “You should. Just write up a bill and give it to whoever is in charge of settling his estate. He wasn't living on welfare.”

  “Will you take it to them?” Blossom's eyes overflowed. “His family ain't real friendly. I got a nasty call just this morning, like they thought I was helping him with his side business and keeping the money.”

  “Side business?” Tony paused, his curiosity piqued. “What's that?”

  “Oh, it's like he's a bank, only not. He lends money.”

  “Loan shark.” Tony thought the information might explain the unpleasant message on his phone. “You do know it's not my job to deliver bills.” He sighed. “Drop it off at the front desk when it's ready.”

  Thinking her cheery outfit wasn't making her feel better, he turned to the work stacked on his desk.

  He called
attorney Carl Lee Cashdollar's office and connected to voice mail. The message in Carl Lee's nasal twang indicated he and his staff were out of town and would the caller please leave a message. Knowing “the staff” was Carl Lee's wife, Tony called their home and received a similar recording. Tony did as requested, giving an array of telephone numbers and used the word “urgent” at least three times.

  After a few more calls to people he thought might have additional information, he learned the couple had gone to Hawaii on holiday but were expected to be back in the office on Monday.

  By the time he left for the day, he felt like he'd accomplished nothing at all.

  Tony loved Theo's shop. And also, or so he was told, did every quilter who ever went inside. Light and airy, the main room was filled with thousands of bolts of cotton fabrics arranged by color, and there was every color imaginable. He'd seen fabrics with flowers and rocks and oriental fabrics and even some with dancing frogs and baseball playing geckos. To one side of the room was a long counter covered with protective mats. After the bolts were selected, this is where the fabric was cut. Behind it was a wall covered with packets of needles, templates, rotary cutters and rulers, marking pens, hoops and other toys and tools for quilters. One whole corner of the room was dedicated to threads—cotton threads, metallic threads and glossy rayon threads.

  The man corner, just inside the front door, was reserved for husbands. A pair of comfortable chairs faced a television/DVD combination. A stack of sports magazines covered a small table. Tony had witnessed a couple of times the husband so involved in what he was watching, the wife had to wait for him.

  The back room was a quilter's haven. Designed as a classroom, it was large enough to hold ten big tables and still have plenty of space to move around. There were enough electrical outlets wired into the walls and floors to accommodate lots of sewing machines and irons. Built into one wall was a bay window with a large, comfortable window seat. There was a window in the wall shared with the shop so both groups could see what was going on. The other walls were covered with flannel, creating large design spaces. In the corner were a sink, a small refrigerator, and a counter that held a coffeepot.

  The regular patrons had their personal mugs hanging on hooks. Unless there was a class scheduled, a quilt on a frame always filled the center of the room. Various groups supplied the quilt tops and the finished quilts were usually given directly to the needy, sent to soldiers, or were raffled off to benefit a charity. Anyone who wished to work on the quilt could. The current quilt was going to be raffled to help pay for the restoration of the steeple on the oldest church in town. Tony knew that because a calendar hanging on the door listed the information

  He found Theo measuring and cutting fabric for a couple of young women. He thought their names were Susan and Melissa. The women didn't stop laughing and talking as they stacked more bolts on the table. Theo handed them each a sheet of paper. “You said you want to do the mystery quilt. Here is the first clue.” Picking up her rotary cutter again, she grinned at them. “If I don't give it to you now, I'll forget.”

  “When do we get the next clue?” Careful to hold the paper out of the reach of the toddler in her arms, the one he thought was Melissa began reading right away.

  “It's alright, Melissa, I'll take some up to the retreat on Friday, or you can pick one up here when you get back.”

  Tony was proud he'd guessed the woman's name.

  “This looks like fun.” The taller of the two, Susan, rocked a stroller and its passenger, a sleeping baby, as she read the paper. “I've never done a mystery quilt before.” She hesitated, nervously fingering the macaroni necklace she wore with her red sweatshirt and jeans. “Can I ask you a couple of questions about it?”

  “Sure.” Theo grinned and pushed her glasses up. “Don't take it too seriously, though. It's not rocket science.” She leaned forward to look at the paper. “What do you want to know?”

  “You say that we need assorted fabrics that are lights, mediums and darks.”

  Theo nodded encouragingly and waited.

  “I guess I'm uncertain how to categorize some of the prints.”

  “Okay.” Theo pointed to a white fabric with black squiggles on it. “I would say that this is light. If you squint at it, it looks white. A black fabric with white lines would appear to be black. For this design, you don't need as much contrast between the dark and the mediums as you do between the mediums and the light. You can do it with either shade or color. Just remember some of your mediums will be darker or lighter than others. It gives the quilt texture. Like the different fabrics in a log cabin.”

  Melissa grinned. “I've got it. If I put this dark yellow against a light blue, it is still easy to see.”

  A wide smile softened the tall woman's face. “So if I want to, I could make it all shades of one color.”

  “Exactly.” Theo said.

  Susan's husband was one of the executives at the new fertilizer plant. Tony understood that sometimes new residents of Silersville felt alienated by the clannish society. He thought the ones who made their way into the quilt shop seemed to be assimilated more quickly.

  With a gleam in her eyes, Susan began pulling blue fabrics and stacking them on the table. “Who's going on the retreat?”

  Listening to his wife's list, he guessed Theo wasn't ready to go home yet, so Tony settled into the man corner and caught up with his reading, studying the statistics of his favorite baseball players. He loved and hated the exciting end of the season. The winter, without baseball, loomed like the dark entrance to a long tunnel.

  “The toilet in the downstairs bathroom doesn't work right,” said Theo. “Do you want to fix it or should I call in the plumber?”

  Tony watched Theo chase a puddle of milk with a rag, racing against Daisy's big pink tongue. The oversized golden retriever was winning. “I'll take a look at it later.” Tony ducked as Theo's flying elbow came perilously close to his nose. “Since there's no baseball game tonight, I'm going to write for a while. Maybe I just need a mental break. An evening in the company of cowboys and buffalo and antelope sounds really good.”

  Tony's mood improved as soon as he entered his study. For a change, the boys were not playing on the computer. Although the room was actually a converted pantry, he considered it his space. Sharing the computer was a necessity, but it rankled a bit when he had to stand in line or throw someone out in order to do his writing. The expensive computer sat on a faux wood desk from one of the discount stores. A yard sale find, the chair was comfortable, if a bit worn, and one of the casters would fall off every time he leaned too far backwards. On the wall to his left was a small corkboard covered with magazine pictures of Montana and Wyoming. His inspiration.

  He opened a file and read through his last typed words. His hero, the marshal, had just ridden out in pursuit of the bank robber when the bad guy circled around and rode back into town. Tony leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, letting his thoughts drift through the scene. The smell of the sage and the heat of the sun mixed with the constant dust in his imaginary little town.

  Unfortunately, no words made it from his mind to his fingers and, this time, the swirls on his screensaver went undisturbed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thursday morning when Tony arrived at his office, Ruth Ann was already at her desk just outside his office door. She smiled at him, not a good sign, when he walked in. She pointed to her companion, and Tony couldn't suppress a groan. Orvan Lundy.

  Orvan was well known throughout Park County and beyond as a petty thief and part-time brewer of moonshine. He was suspected of many worse crimes. As far as Tony knew, the only crimes the man had never confessed to were the ones he actually committed. Tony was torn. He knew deep down this would be a waste of time, and he didn't anticipate learning anything he could use. On the other hand, there was often an element of truth hidden in Orvan's tall tales that led to the solution of minor problems.

  “Mr. Lundy.” Tony paused at the doorway, holdin
g the door open with his shoulder. “Would you care for a cup of coffee before we get started?”

  The little man rose from his metal chair. “Why, that's right sociable of you to offer something like that, Sheriff.” Licking his chapped lips in anticipation, he peered up at Tony. “I don't suppose you could add a bit of flavoring to it?” Since his faded blue eyes always had a glassy sheen, Tony couldn't be sure if the old man had already been in the moonshine.

  Tony just shook his head and waited.

  “Well, I didn't think so.” Cocking his head to one side, Orvan appeared to be listening to something only he could hear. When, at length, he must have heard the end of the message, he said, “I'll take the coffee.”

  A nod from Tony sent Ruth Ann on the errand.

  Tony let his office door close, and leading the little man down the hall to their interrogation room, he took the seat directly opposite from Orvan. The faded little man didn't look capable of crossing the street on his own, much less killing a man, but Tony knew inside the shrunken exterior was a man in his seventies who was as strong as hickory. Resting now on the surface of the inexpensive metal table, Orvan's gnarled hands looked crippled. Decades of outdoor labor had tanned his skin like cowhide and, although suffering from arthritis, he was still capable of caning the seats of the ladder-back chairs he made completely by hand. When he stood up straight, which he rarely did, he was about five foot eight. He might weigh a hundred and thirty pounds. Wearing his habitual denim overalls, he had spruced up for the interview by rubbing shoe polish on the top of his iron gray hair. Since he obviously hadn't consulted a mirror, the polish did not extend down the sides or back. The end result was he appeared to be wearing a very greasy black beret above a sunken-cheeked face as weathered as his hands.

  Orvan was the first to speak. “I doubt you realize, Sheriff, but I dye my hair.”

  Startled, Tony pulled his eyes from the unusual hairstyle and back to Orvan's leathery face. “Why tell me?” What he wanted to ask was more along the line of wondering why their conversations almost always began the same way.