Wild Goose Chase

by Terri Thayer

  “I won’t let that happen,” Kym said. “This shop is part of my family.”

  I knew that QP meant family to Vangie, too, but she was brave enough to stick up for me. “But selling is Dewey’s decision.”

  “Where would you be without QP? Out on the street, that’s where. Jobs aren’t that easy to find, you know. Especially for someone with a past,” Kym said.

  Uh-oh. Kym had to be bluffing. Only I knew the real extent of Vangie’s visits to the wrong side of the law.

  Vangie was quick to shift the focus from her. “The store is Dewey’s,” Vangie said. “Why can’t she do what she wants with it?”

  “Look, Audra made a mistake leaving the store just to Dewey. If she hadn’t died so suddenly, I’m sure she would have changed her will to reflect my involvement in the shop.”

  “But Dewey is her daughter. Do you really think Audra would have excluded her?”

  Kym waved her off. “Look, Dewey can be the owner. I can accept that if she’ll go back to her high-tech job and let me run the store. Problem solved. And if you help me convince her that’s the best solution, I’ll take care of you.”

  “That’s what you want—to be the manager?” Vangie asked.

  “Don’t you get it, Vangie? If she sells or if she stays, either way, Dewey is on her way out. As far as I can see, you have only two choices. You can either stick with me or take your chances with a new owner. What’s it going to be?”

  When Vangie didn’t answer, Kym went for the jugular.

  “You need this worse than I do. Who’s going to hire you with a felony on your record?” Kym said, her sweet smile still plastered on her face.

  Vangie stiffened, hand poised over the split bagel with the long bread knife in her hand. We’d both thought her criminal record was a secret.

  Vangie turned and saw me in the doorway. Her face was guarded, but her eyes sparked, reminding me that she had survived much rougher characters than Kym. I took a step forward, about to reveal myself, but she warned me off with a look and a wave of the knife.

  “Hey, Kym,” Vangie said. “When were you going to tell Dewey about those calls from Claire Armstrong?”

  Claire had been calling me? I looked from Vangie to Kym and was rewarded with a look of complete astonishment on Kym’s face. Not surprise about the calls, but surprise that Vangie knew about them.

  Kym sputtered. “I never got any calls from—”

  “Oh yes, you did,” Vangie said. “Claire called yesterday morning after she saw Dewey at the show. Said she’d been trying to get to Dewey for months, but she couldn’t get past you.”

  My fists clenched into hard little balls. Kym had been manipulating things behind the scenes, keeping me in the dark about Claire’s offer to buy the store. Claire must have come down to the show specifically looking for me Thursday morning. I stepped into the room.

  “I didn’t know she wanted to buy the store,” I said. “When were you going to tell me?”

  At the sight of me, Kym tightened her lips and crossed her arms tightly across her chest. She glared at Vangie. Vangie relaxed. She poured some of her coffee into a cup and offered it to me. I signaled no thanks.

  “Try to see it my way,” Kym said. “I’ve put my heart and soul into this place and it’s not fair that you can just up and sell it anytime you like.”

  I saw red. “It’s your fault I want to sell the shop. If you’d have just tried to get with the technology, things might have been different. I’m just not interested in being here unless the store gets computerized.”

  Kym rolled her eyes. “That’s because you don’t understand quilting or our customers. You don’t know the first thing about quilting.”

  I shrugged, wondering why that hurt. I knew I was not a quilter, but still the words stung. “You may be right, but that’s not the issue. The fact is the store is mine, and I can sell it if I want to. My brothers, my father, you—especially you—have no say. It’s all up to me. And I say I’m finished.”

  “How can you sell the store when the precious computer says inventory is missing?” she said.

  Vangie tensed, stopping in mid-sip. Kym’s eyes flashed with victory. She tore off a tiny piece of bagel and ate it.

  I wasn’t backing down. “Is that the reason you crashed the computer? Did you think that without the accurate inventory I couldn’t sell?”

  Kym tossed her hair over her shoulders, first one side, then the other. “Kevin told me I didn’t wreck the laptop, that it would take more than just turning it off to lose all the data. You lied to me.”

  “He’s right, the computer’s not broken. That doesn’t mean you haven’t been doing everything you can to undermine me.”

  “Exactly how have I been doing that?”

  I glanced at Vangie. She was watching with interest. “Tell me why you’ve been sending $550 a month to WGC when we’ve never received any merchandise from that company.”

  “WGC? That’s what you ‘found’?”

  To my total disgust, she used air quotes around the word.

  “Wise up, Dewey,” Kym said. “That’s the money your mother borrowed.”

  I looked from Vangie to Kym. I couldn’t believe what Kym was saying.

  “Mom borrowed money, yeah right.” I let the sarcasm drip. “For what?”

  She shrugged. “It’s no big deal. Your mother had borrowed from Claire before.”

  “Claire?” Now I was just confused. I looked at Vangie but she just shrugged. “What does Claire have to do with this?”

  “WGC is Claire’s company, Dewey,” she said.

  Kym caught my look of confusion and continued with the air of someone who loved to be right. “Claire uses that company to collect the money she lends to quilters. Been doing it for years.”

  My head spun. My hand went to the notebook in my pocket. I had been on the right track. But the book wasn’t a list of Justine’s gambling losses, it was a record of who owed money to Claire.

  “You know, Dewey, it kind of hurts my feelings that you thought I’d do anything to harm Quilter Paradiso,” Kym said.

  Kym didn’t look in the least hurt. She looked like she was enjoying herself, like she always did when she knew something I didn’t. She drained her coffee and jumped up from her chair, pulling down the lace-trimmed cuffs on her shirt and smoothing her skirt, ending with a hair flip. “I’m glad I could clear that up for you. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”

  Without another word, she dropped her coffee cup in the garbage, grabbed her purse and her keys, and left.

  I sat in the chair she’d vacated, the seat still warm from her body, pulling the notebook out of my pocket.

  “Why did Mom borrow money from Claire?” I asked Vangie, even though I could see she didn’t have a clue.

  I laid the notebook on the table and opened it. The answer was in these pages. Maybe if I understood the significance of the markings, I could figure this out. Vangie looked over my shoulder.

  “What’s that?”

  “I found it the other night. I thought the notebook belonged to Justine, but it must be Claire’s. A ledger. A list of accounts. Something.”

  I flipped through. Before I got to the QP page, I found the page with Justine’s name across the top. Below were several groupings of flying-geese blocks with letters alongside. I couldn’t see it yet, but this was the proof that Justine owed Claire thirty thousand dollars.

  I handed the notebook to Vangie. “What do you think?”

  Vangie licked her finger as she turned the pages. “There must be forty names in here, Dewey. Do you know who they are?”

  “I recognize some as vendors from the show.”

  Vangie’s brow furrowed as she studied the pages.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Thi
nk about it, Dewey. If Claire was lending out large sums of money, anyone that owed her money had motive to kill her.”

  I looked at Vangie. “You mean anyone like me.”

  The answers to the questions about Claire’s lending and why my mother borrowed money from her were at the show. Freddy, Myra, Eve. Someone had to know what these markings meant in the notebook. There was still more than an hour before the show was scheduled to begin. I would try to talk to them before things got crazy.

  The Wild Goose Chase antique quilt was at the show, too. I needed to have it home with me.

  “Have a nice ride yesterday?”

  The wrinkled smoker, Pam, was standing outside squinting into the early morning sun as I approached the convention center. Her skin looked like an interior decorator had done a faux-crackle finish on it; fine lines crisscrossed the strong planes of her face. I turned my face away as she exhaled.

  “Saw you yesterday getting into that shiny truck. Just wondering if you had a good time,” she said.

  I bristled. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Well, it is, kind of. I had a side bet with Myra that you and that cute cop are more than just friends.” She picked a piece of cigarette paper off her tongue.

  Clearly the smoking had hardened Pam’s arteries to the point where she was suffering from short-term memory loss. Myra hadn’t even been around yesterday afternoon.

  “Officer Healy and I just had lunch, so you lose the bet,” I lied. “I’ll be sure to tell Myra when I see her.”

  “Go ahead. There she is.” Pam pointed her cigarette past me. I brushed by her as I spotted Myra waving at me from inside. She was pushing a dolly through the still-deserted atrium. I joined her.

  “Show must go on?” I asked.

  Myra rolled her eyes. “Eve’s insisting the schedule remain the same. I didn’t want to add to her angst this morning, so I’m heading inside to set up for the lecture later on.”

  Myra leaned on the pile of quilts, a little breathless. “So what happened at the police station? Was Sergeant Sanchez mean to you? Did he put you in a holding cell?”

  “We talked in his office,” I said. “He was very polite. He finally figured out I didn’t have anything to tell him, and he let me go home.”

  “That’s good. Be sure to come to my lecture. I’m going to make a very exciting announcement.”

  Alarm bells sounded in my head. “You’re not going to talk about the shop, are you? I’m not ready for you to say anything about that.”

  “You’ll just have to attend and see,” she said coyly.

  “Hold on, we have some conditions to talk about.” I needed to talk her into keeping Vangie.

  “Just be there.” She started to push off.

  “Wait, do you know anything about WGC?” I asked.

  She held up her hands as if to say, “No.”

  I decided to tread lightly. If she didn’t know about Claire’s sideline, I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. I’d been the bearer of enough bad news for Myra this weekend. “Someone told me that Claire had a separate company named WGC.”

  “That’s preposterous,” she snorted. “Who told you that?”

  She didn’t know. She was going to be devastated when she found out.

  I tried to cover up. “Never mind.”

  Luckily for me, Myra was concentrating on her own agenda. “I’ve got to get going,” Myra said. “We’re setting up in the alcove back by the prizewinners. See you at two.”

  Myra pushed the cart toward the quilt show. The door was open and unmanned, and she was out of sight in a minute.

  “Sweet mother of God, girl, what’s with you and finding bodies?” Freddy came into view. He was moving quickly, but he stopped and slung an arm around my shoulder.

  “Don’t remind me. Justine had been dead the whole time we were in the dressing room, just lying on that stage.”

  “Man,” Freddy shook his head and squeezed me. I cleared my head of the vision.

  “Going inside?” he asked. “Walk with me. I’m giving my staff a pep talk in about three minutes. I’ve got to move at least six embroidery machines before tomorrow night.”

  “Freddy, tell me about borrowing from Claire. Your name’s in here.” I held up the notebook.

  “What is it?” he asked, angling his head to get a better look.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. You borrowed from Claire, right?”

  A pained look crossed his face. After a quick glance around, Freddy plucked the notebook from my hand. His voice got rough.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He moved swiftly, his hand gripping the notebook so tightly, his knuckles turned white.

  “Freddy, wait up.” He was already ten feet away before I put my legs in gear.

  I started after him but felt a restraining hand on my back. I turned. Behind me, his head just barely grazing my shoulder, was the security guard.

  “Sorry, can’t let you pass.” The scrawny security guard linked his hands across his chest, trying to appear bigger than he was. The blue shirt with pockets and epaulets didn’t help—he looked more like a Boy Scout than a police officer. I reached for my badge and realized I didn’t have it—again. Day three of the quilt show and I was in the same place. I could tell by the smirk on his face that he was enjoying my discomfort.

  “Don’t do this to me,” I begged. Freddy disappeared from view without looking back, carrying the notebook with him.

  “No ID, no entrance.” He stepped in front of me.

  “You’re really not going to let me in?” I asked. “You know I belong in there.”

  He smiled. Payback’s a bitch.

  I stared at his back, imagining myself laying him out with a knock to the head. It was tempting. I controlled my anger and tried to think.

  Where was my ID? I’d had it yesterday afternoon—Buster’d taken it off my neck after I’d caught the elastic band on the volume knob of the truck radio, nearly strangling myself during our tryst in the truck. I forced myself to think past that moment, to what came after.

  I’d come back to the quilt show late, and gone straight to rehearsal. Putting on Claire’s outfit, I’d taken off my ID. I didn’t remember picking it up when I’d retrieved my street clothes. The badge must still be on the hook in the dressing room. I headed that way.

  The corridor to the dressing room was deserted. A picture of Justine walking this way yesterday filled my mind. I felt her presence in the silence. Before the fashion show, this hall must have felt as quiet and empty as it did right now.

  My stomach fluttered, and I regretted every scary movie I’d ever seen. I could just skip getting into the show. I wouldn’t need the ID if I just went home now. But the Wild Goose Chase quilt was in the booth, so I pressed on.

  A noise up ahead made me stop in my tracks, heart pounding, as I envisioned entering a murderer’s lair. I was giving myself the creeps. When the silence deepened, I convinced myself I was alone and started walking again. I had to get into that show, talk to Freddy, and get the notebook back, and there was Myra’s lecture. What was her surprise? I needed my badge. Now.

  Eve had said she didn’t care about Justine’s gambling, that she was okay with her partner blowing off steam. But that was before she stole from their company to keep her habit going. Had she done it before? Eve had to be mightily ticked off about that.

  Suddenly, my path was blocked by yellow crime-scene tape. The doors to the auditorium were to the left, just past the tape, and the dressing room lay beyond that. I’d thought I’d be able to continue down this hall to get to the dressing room. I hadn’t considered crime scene tape.

  I looked around, saw no one. I could find a police officer to let me in. Or I could just get in there and get my badge
. I tugged on the tape to see how well it was secured. To my surprise, the end came off easily. Before I could form another thought, I pulled the tape away from the wall, took two steps inside the boundary, then pushed the end back in place. Thankfully, it stuck, looking like it had never been moved. The difference between the crime scene and the rest of the world was just a few steps.

  I would duck into the dressing room and get the ID badge and leave. No one would have to know I’d been there.

  I went past the closed doors that led to the auditorium and through the arched doorway into the dressing room. Several lights were still on, casting weird shadows on the counter. A rack of clothes stood in front of the lockers, the outfits hanging forlornly on the hangers. In the morning light, their sequins, feathers, and glitter were glaringly inappropriate, like a Las Vegas showgirl walking down the Strip in broad daylight.

  There was no sign of my badge.

  I turned slowly, straining to see through the clutter. An abandoned eyelash curler lay on its side, looking like a medieval torture device. Promises of beauty unfulfilled. The echoes of us singing “I Feel Pretty” reverberated in my head. Last night, this space had been full of life, now it was sad and empty.

  I spotted my ID card lying in the middle of a pile of makeup dust, the edges red with powdered rouge. I scooped it up and wiped the dust off on my backside.

  “Hold on.”

  The sound of Buster’s voice behind me sent a chill down my spine and I shuddered to release it. This was not the sweet rhythms on my answering machine. This was pure cop. He sounded too much like Sanchez for me. I palmed my ID and turned.

  Buster was framed in the doorway, legs spread wide apart as though to block my escape. His eyes were dark, like the ocean on a stormy day. He was pushing his ballpoint pen open and closed. Each measured click set up an answering drip of acid in my stomach.