Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 9)

by Arlene Sachitano

  “Don‘t DeAnn’s parents own the video and game store here in town?” Harriet asked.

  “They came back after Molly graduated college and went to work in Seattle. DeAnn had come back here and gotten married, and they figured they’d be having grandchildren, which, of course, they did,” Beth explained.

  “DeAnn’s parents never wanted to be wheat farmers. They only went because Molly needed to be away from here,” Mavis added. “And they really hoped she would study something that would take her away permanently when she got out of college.”

  “Wow,” Harriet repeated.

  Lauren leaned back in her chair.

  “I wonder what happened to Amber Price.”

  “She seems to have vanished without a trace. I remember reading about it in the paper at the time,” Beth said. “The police didn’t have much to go on. One of the neighbors was a man who had been in some kind of trouble with the law. He was crucified in the press and everywhere else.”

  Mavis set her mug down again.

  “Leo Tabor. That was the man’s name.”

  Aunt Beth nodded.

  “Back then, Foggy Point didn’t have crime like we do now. We also didn’t have as many police officers, and in any case, they never came up with anything, But Leo lost his job anyway. He proclaimed his innocence to anyone who would listen, but eventually, he left town, and that was the end of it.”

  Lauren tapped a note into her tablet.

  “Just out of curiosity, I think I’ll see what he’s been up to for the last few decades.”

  “Seems like Molly has turned her tragedy into something positive with her work finding missing and exploited children,” Harriet said.

  Beth lifted her mug, but it was empty.

  “Do you want a refill?” Lauren asked.

  “No, I better get going. If I’m going to be working on these quilt blocks, I need to go home and finish the mailer I’m working on for the hospice fundraiser.”

  Mavis stood and picked up her purse.

  “I’ve got a few loose ends to tie up myself.”

  Harriet looked at her aunt.

  “Before you go, do you know why Carla was so red-faced during the meeting earlier when we were talking about Aiden?”

  Beth stared down at the table before she spoke.

  “Oh, honey, I’d hoped you didn’t notice that.”

  “Not much gets by our Harriet,” Lauren said, and Mavis glared at her.

  “What?” Harriet asked.

  Beth reached out and patted Harriet’s hand.

  “I think she was feeling awkward because she told us last week that Aiden calls home every week. He’s checking on his dog and making sure there’s enough money in the household accounts to pay the gardener and take care of whatever else upkeep needs to be done.”

  Harriet put on her jacket, grabbed her purse then picked up their empty mugs.

  “I figured it was something like that.” She carried the dishes to the bussing tub and went out to the car.

  Chapter 3

  “Did I miss anything?” Lauren asked as she breezed into the large classroom at Pins and Needles three days later.

  Harriet emerged from the shop kitchen carrying a tray with mugs and a basket of mixed tea bags on it.

  “We all just got here ourselves. Do you want tea or coffee?”

  Lauren set her quilting bag on the table at her customary spot.

  “Tea would be great.”

  Connie followed Harriet into the room with a carafe of coffee in one hand and a kettle of hot water in the other.

  Two ironing boards were set up at the back of the room, and Mavis and Beth were busy re-pressing the fabrics they would be cutting.

  “We’ll be a minute more,” Beth said without turning around. “Drink your tea and entertain yourselves.”

  Lauren pulled her tablet from her bag.

  “I’ve assembled a list of facts about human trafficking for us.”

  “Why?” Harriet asked.

  “I figured since we’re making quilts as prizes for the big donors at a fund-raiser to make money for the missing-and-exploited organization, we should know whereof we stitch.”

  “Isn’t that ‘whereof we speak’?” Robin asked.

  “Whatever. I wanted to know what we’re supporting.”

  Mavis turned from her ironing board.

  “We’re supporting DeAnn and through her, her sister. That’s enough for me.”

  Lauren looked at DeAnn.

  “Of course I’m doing my share, no matter what, but since we have to kill some time…” She turned to look at Mavis and Beth. “…I thought you all might like to know a few fun facts about human trafficking.”

  “I’m interested,” Carla said.

  “Thank you. Question number one—Does anyone know which state was the first to criminalize human trafficking?” Lauren looked around the table. “DeAnn, you don’t get to play because your sister probably told you already.”

  DeAnn rolled her eyes. “You have no idea.”

  “Anyone?”

  Harriet raised her hand.

  “Since you’re asking, I’m going to guess Washington.”

  “Give that girl a Kewpie Doll. Now, a harder one—Which West Coast city ranks third highest in the country for sex trafficking?”

  Robin twirled her pen between her fingers.

  “The way you stated that question, I’m guessing it is a trick question.”

  “It’s not Foggy Point,” Connie said.

  Lauren and Harriet laughed.

  “I’m going to guess Seattle,” Robin said.

  “Correct you are,” Lauren said. “With its international port and proximity to Canada and Asia, it’s not surprising.”

  “Molly has told me a lot about missing and exploited children,” DeAnn said. “And all kidding aside, I was shocked the first time she told me there are something like three hundred thousand young girls working in the sex trade each year.”

  Carla tapped on the front of her phone, opening the calculator function.

  “Wow, if they were evenly spread over all fifty states that would be six thousand per state.”

  Mavis carried her pieces of fabric to the big table and laid them carefully across one end.

  “Now that we’ve established it’s a worthy cause, shall we begin working?”

  Robin pulled out her legal pad.

  “I think this might work better if we divide up into two teams, one for each quilt.”

  Harriet picked her bag up from the floor beside her chair.

  “I’ll vote for that. I think that will help prevent us from mixing up the fabrics when we get to the sewing stage.”

  “I like the idea, too.” Lauren agreed. “The lavenders are pretty similar, and so are the dark greens. I know one set is Civil War reproduction fabric and the other is contemporary floral, but their colors are close.”

  Robin wrote Team One and Team Two across the top of her paper.

  “Does anyone care which team they’re on?”

  No one did, so she began writing names under the headings.

  “Okay. How about Harriet, Lauren, Carla and Mavis on team one, and Beth, DeAnn, Connie and me on team two?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Harriet said.

  The rest nodded agreement.

  “Let’s finish all the cutting today,” Mavis said. “I brought gallon zip bags to put the strip sets into. That way, everyone can take a few bags home to start work on.”

  Aunt Beth held up a handful of three-by-five index cards.

  “I marked these cards with a quarter-inch line. Each person should take one home and line the edge of the card up with the quarter-inch seam guide on your sewing machine. Lower your presser foot, and then the needle, and if the needle doesn’t go through the line on the card, adjust your needle position until it does. This should insure that all our seams are the same.”

  Connie took her card and smiled at Beth.

  “Thank you so much for doing this.�
��

  DeAnn picked up the pile of strips she’d cut and carried them to Connie, where they would be matched up with the other colors. She stopped and pressed her lips together before speaking.

  “I apologize in advance for my sister. Beth and Connie and Mavis probably already know, but for any of you who don’t, she’s obsessed with figuring out something that happened to her and a friend when they were little.

  “The friend disappeared when the two of them were playing and was never found. Lauren, she’s likely to ask you for help with computer searches, Beth, Connie, and Mavis, she’ll probably grill you guys about what was going on in Foggy Point all those years ago. Carla, I can only imagine what she might ask you, but believe me, she will ask.”

  “Don’t worry, honey,” Mavis told her. “We all understand about family.”

  “Anyone here hungry?” Jorge Perez, owner and head chef of Tico’s Tacos, stood in the hall outside the classroom with two large insulated carry bags. “Señora Beth told me you were working so hard you wouldn’t have time to take a lunch break. I decided to bring the food to you.”

  “Bless you,” Connie said.

  Lauren got up and went to the door.

  “What do you have for us?”

  She took one of the bags and carried it to the table. Jorge followed, set his bag beside hers, and they began taking foil-wrapped paper plates from the warm interiors.

  “Just for variety, I made you chimichangas served on a bed of lettuce with a side of Mexican rice. The sauce is a mild red sauce, except for Señora Connie, who can take the heat.” He said this last with a wicked smile. Connie had lived most of her life in Washington, but she’d been born in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

  “I have a boneless, skinless chicken breast on a bed of vegetables for Robin, and extra guacamole for Lauren.” He looked at the women seated around the table. “Have I missed anything?”

  “Sounds like you’ve covered everything,” Beth said with a smile. “As usual.”

  He smiled at her with a warmth reserved for her and her alone.

  Connie closed the box of gallon bags and handed it back to Mavis.

  “The fabric is cut and bagged. Does everyone understand Beth’s instructions about setting your quarter-inch seam?”

  Heads nodded as everyone stood and began gathering their tools and fabric and stuffing them into their bags.

  “Shall we meet again at our regular time on Tuesday?” Robin asked, pen and paper in hand.

  DeAnn’s phone rang before anyone could reply. She held it to her ear, listening.

  “Okay, got it,” she finally said and turned to the group.

  “I hesitate to tell you what that was.” She sighed deeply. “They’ve got a late entry to the ten-thousand-dollar-donation club.”

  Lauren sat back down.

  “Oh, geez.”

  “I take it we’re making another quilt,” Harriet said.

  Mavis sat down again, too.

  “Well, if we can figure out the fabrics, we can each take some home and use the pieces we cut today as a guide to keep them the same size.”

  Marjory Swain, the owner of Pins and Needles, walked into the room.

  “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help but hear your dilemma. I might have a solution. Given the color scheme you already have going on, I was thinking you could do nineteen-thirties reproduction fabrics. I have the solids that go along with them. I think there’s a green that is dark enough for you, and there are multiple lavender prints, and prints with cream or white backgrounds. Would you like me to bring a few bolts in for you to look at?”

  They did want, and within a few minutes, they had selected colors and Marjory had taken them into the store to cut. Lauren and Harriet followed her out to the front counter to wait for the fabrics.

  “I guess it’s good that more people are donating that much money to Molly’s cause, but I’m going to be hard-pressed to get three quilts stitched in time for the event with the rest of my workload. I’ll be back on tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.”

  “Oh, wa-wa-wa,” Lauren told her with a laugh. “You’re not the only one with a real job. I can come help you do prep work, if that would help.”

  “Moral support will help,” Harriet told her then took the stack of cut fabric from Marjory.

  It took them another hour, but they cut the additional fabric and divided it between the two teams before they left for the day.

  Chapter 4

  “Here, let me help you,” Harriet told Lauren, who was struggling to carry her sewing machine, a messenger bag that doubled as both a computer carrier and a purse, and her quilt bag up the porch steps to the studio. Harriet took the quilt bag and the messenger bag. “I have a place for you on the opposite side of the table from me.”

  She had set up two mobile sewing machine tables facing each other at the end of her large cutting table. She was thankful once again that her aunt had designed the quilt studio for maximum flexibility when she’d added the room to the large Victorian house Harriet now called home.

  “Do you want some iced tea before we start? It’s already made.”

  She pointed to the pie-crust table that sat between the two wing-back chairs in her customer reception area. A pitcher of tea sat on a quilted table mat, with glasses full of ice on either side.

  “You“ll need another glass of ice. I invited Detective Morse to join us before we start stitching. If she lingers, we’ll get her to press seams for us.”

  “I’m sure you have a good reason for inviting her to our sewing night. So, what is it?” Harriet poured tea into the two glasses.

  “Go get the other glass of ice; and by the time you’re back, she’ll probably be here, and I can tell you both at the same time.”

  Sure enough, by the time Harriet returned, Jane Morse, sometime quilter and full-time Foggy Point PD detective, was sitting in the wingback chair opposite Lauren and sipping tea. Harriet pulled a wheeled work chair over and poured tea into the glass she’d brought.

  “Okay, we’re all here. Now will you tell us why we’re talking instead of sewing our nine-patch blocks?”

  Lauren reached into her messenger bag and pulled out her tablet computer.

  “As we expected, DeAnn’s sister asked me to help her with a computer search. I think I might be the first one she’s asked.” She looked at Detective Morse. “Do you know about DeAnn’s sister?”

  Morse shook her head. Harriet gave her a brief synopsis, ending with Molly’s arriving early for her fundraising event and the Loose Threads’ supposition she was going to involve all of them in her endless search for Amber Price and her own missing day.

  “I know that name,” Morse said. “When I switched to the cold case unit a couple of months ago, the team went through all the cold cases in Foggy Point for the last forty years. All of them are important, but we evaluate them for signs that the passage of time could help with their solution.

  “For instance, sometimes, if a critical suspect has been jailed for something else or even died, witnesses who were afraid to testify before will speak to us. Often we already knew who the perpetrator was; we just needed a witness to recant an alibi or something like that.

  “That being said, we looked at the Amber Price disappearance. We have nothing. No one saw anything. There was another child with her, but our notes say that child couldn’t remember anything, even with help from a memory recovery specialist. I take it that child is DeAnn’s sister?”

  Lauren stood up and paced a few steps away before coming back.

  “Half-sister,” she corrected. “She’s DeAnn’s half-sister, but that’s not actually what I asked you to come by for. Molly did ask me to help her dig for information about that time period in Foggy Point, but before I did that, I did my usual due diligence and ran a background check on Molly herself.”

  Harriet raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

  “Hey, you never know. I didn’t know if she’d go vigilante if I did find so
mething about who took Amber Price. In my business, you can’t be too careful.”

  “I thought you were a computer programmer and software designer,” Morse interrupted.

  “I am. That’s my day job. You can’t imagine how many people come to me for help digging things out of the web. Dark and white.”

  Morse glanced at Harriet, but Harriet just shrugged.

  “Anyway,” Lauren continued in an emphatic tone. “While I was talking to her, I casually asked her about her abusive ex-boyfriend. Josh Phillips is his name. I thought that might be useful to know, and, boy, was it.

  “Anyway, I also dug around seeing what I could find out about her non-profit. It seems on the up-and-up, by the way. When I was looking at the web page, it had been updated to reflect the three ten-thousand-dollar donors, but it said the new one wished to remain anonymous.”

  “Really,” Harriet said.

  “Really. It seemed a little fishy to me. Most people who donate that much want the publicity. Besides, this is Foggy Point. No one can keep that kind of secret. I thought it was possible it was someone out of our area, but if they’re from Seattle, it seems like they’d donate at the event the organization has coming up there in another month. Anyway, let’s just say I was curious.”

  She stopped by the table and sipped her tea.

  “I’ll admit this next part involved a bit of subterfuge.” She glanced at Detective Morse. “I called the Seattle office of the non-profit and told the sweet girl who answered that we were personalizing the quilts and I needed the donor’s name to put on the embroidered label. I swore I wouldn’t reveal it until the quilt was awarded. She confirmed the donor would be attending the auction and dinner.”

  “And now you are going to betray that confidence?” Morse asked.

  “I hadn’t planned on it. I was curious, and I expected it to be someone who was publicity shy, or Molly’s parents, or something like that.”

  Harriet leaned forward in her chair. “So, who is it?”