“Rockin’ Robin” sounded from Lauren’s pants pocket. She pulled the phone out and tapped the answer button, stepped away from the group and covered her free ear with her hand while she listened. She spoke a few words, but Harriet couldn’t hear what she was saying.
“That was Robin,” she explained when she’d rejoined them.
“Yeah, we got that,” Harriet said. “What did she have to say?”
“It is as bad as we feared. Molly’s body was found in Fogg Park. Robin said DeAnn wasn’t sure, but she thinks Molly was hit in the head. She was in the vicinity of where she was found when she was five.”
Harriet looked up at the ceiling and sighed.
“I guess any hope we might have had that Amber’s killer left the area was premature.”
Lauren shook her head sadly.
“It’s hard to believe there was anything Molly could find all these years later that would cause the killer to silence her.”
Harriet looked at her.
“But she said she remembered. It’s possible her so-called psychic really did say something that triggered her memory.”
Lauren’s eyes got wide, and her mouth turned down.
“Yeah. Molly was just the kind of person who would confront her killer by herself if she remembered.”
No one could think of what to say after that, so the three women busied themselves texting the rest of the Threads while James gathered the empty water bottles and carried them to the recycling containers.
Connie met Harriet and James when they arrived at Aunt Beth’s front door.
“Where’s Beth?” she asked and stepped aside so they could enter.
“Jorge is driving her. He’s being a total mother hen. I don’t think he’s driving over ten miles an hour for fear of jostling her around.”
Connie led the way to the TV room. As promised, the hide-a-bed was freshly made with extra pillows stacked in the side chair. Connie had placed a pile of new quilting magazines on a TV tray next to the bed, along with an insulated water bottle and the TV remote control.
Harriet fingered the magazine edges.
“Looks like you’ve thought of everything. We might need to move her chair in the living room back a little. They’re sending her home with one of those knee scooters. She’ll need a clear path to the bathroom. I suspect the wider the space the better.”
James slid the chair back and moved the side table that went with it, too.
“The patient has arrived,” Jorge announced as he pushed the door open with his foot and carried Aunt Beth over the threshold. Connie stood aside, and he carefully navigated the path to the TV room. Brownie barked and circled Jorge’s feet until he had set Beth on the bed. The little dog jumped onto her as soon as Jorge let go and began licking her face.
“Enough, already,” she said and pushed Brownie away with her good hand. “Now, tell me what’s happened. Detective Morse went flying out of the hospital like her hair was on fire, and you’ve all been whispering and texting more than my situation warrants, so something else must have happened. I have a sprained ankle and a strained wrist, and you’re all treating me like I’m on life support.”
Lauren slid her phone into her pocket with a guilty look but deferred to Harriet.
Harriet cleared her throat.
“It seems Molly’s been murdered. We don’t know anything other than that. I tried to return voicemails she’d sent me, and a police detective answered her phone. Apparently they’d just found her body and were in the early stages of identifying her.”
“That’s terrible,” Beth said. “Is Robin with DeAnn?”
“She was going to go find her,” Harriet answered.
“We probably need a meeting of the Threads tomorrow,” Connie said thoughtfully.
“I agree,” Beth said. “It’ll need to be here, of course.”
Jorge stepped closer to the bed.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Your doctor said you would probably have neck pain in the morning when the morphine they gave you at the hospital wears off. He said he would arrange for you to see the physical therapist in the morning. He also suggested we see if a massage therapist could come here to see you since he thinks you clenched every muscle in your body.”
Beth pressed her lips together and looked at him.
“You’d clench your muscles, too, if you went over a cliff.”
Harriet waited to see if Jorge was going to continue the discussion, and when he didn’t she took a step closer to the bed.
“He’s right. You need to take care of yourself first. I’m sure we’re going to need more than one meeting about this. We haven’t figured out what happened to Amber yet. It’s possible Molly’s death doesn’t have anything to do with Amber’s, but that would be quite a coincidence if it wasn’t related somehow.”
Beth leaned back against her pillows.
“Okay, I suppose you’re right, but you come over tomorrow afternoon and tell me everything you talk about. And don’t forget to use the flip chart. It’s in my kitchen utility closet.”
“Will do,” Harriet promised.
Lauren smiled.
“I’ll go one better. I’ll record it for you so you don’t miss a word.”
Beth visibly relaxed.
“Okay, then. If it’s all right with you folks, I think I’d like to get in my nightgown.”
Jorge and Connie both started for her bedroom while Harriet and Lauren looked at each other, wide-eyed.
“I got this,” Connie told Jorge in her “don’t argue with me” teacher voice.
Harriet and Lauren went back to the living room.
“Shall we meet at the Steaming Cup in the morning?” Lauren suggested.
“That works for me, although I don’t think I’ll be bringing our flip chart there.”
“You can write up the chart after.”
“I’m going to assume I still have to stitch the quilts for the fundraiser until someone tells me anything different. Given that, I need to work a good part of tomorrow.”
“You’re not the only one, but one thing at a time. I’ll call Robin if you’ll call Carla and Mavis.”
“Deal.” Harriet turned to James. “As soon as my aunt is settled, I think I’ll be ready to go.”
“Don’t rush on my account. I’ve got culinary student interns right now, so I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to prep food.”
“Thank you, I owe you.”
He smiled, and Harriet felt an unexpected warm glow in the center of her chest.
Chapter 13
It was foggy when Harriet opened the door the next morning. Scooter planted his feet and refused to move until she picked him up and carried him down the porch steps.
“Hey, you should be grateful you only have to go to the end of the street and back. I have to run three miles after you go back in.” She tugged gently on his thin leash, and he finally gave up and started walking. “Be glad you don’t belong to James. He’d be making you run races for publicity’s sake.”
Scooter began a slow trot as if to prove he could race if called upon to do so. Harriet laughed and wondered again how she’d survived for all those years without a dog.
They finished his walk and her run and shower in just over an hour. While she was running, she’d gone over in her mind all the stops she’d made the previous day and tried to remember where she’d parked at each place. If her memory was correct, she’d only been in secluded places twice. The first time was when she’d stopped at the dry cleaners—the shrubbery around the parking area would allow someone to approach the car without being seen, but she hadn’t been in the shop very long; and besides, she’d driven the car all day after that without incident.
The second time someone might have tampered with the car was when she’d gone to the grocery store. The parking lot had been crowded, and the only spot she’d found was in the outer row of spaces that faced a thick laurel hedge. She’d made it easier for whomever had done it by backing into he
r space, something she routinely did when driving the Beetle, since the trunk was in the front. That had to be when it happened. She made a mental note to see if the grocery store had security cameras.
“You guys guard the fortress,” she told her dog and cat as she dug in the kitchen closet for her purse then handed out a treat for each of them.”Be good,” she admonished and headed for the door.
Lauren pulled out the chair next to hers at the big table in the Steaming Cup.
“I saved you a seat.”
Harriet looped her purse strap over the chair back and sat. She looked down the length of the empty table.
“Where is everyone?”
“Connie’s going by to see your aunt, Robin had to go to her kids’ school to deliver a forgotten lunch, and Carla just pulled into the parking lot. I don’t know where Mavis is, but I’m guessing she’s at your aunt’s, too.”
“I guess my suggestion to let her sleep late fell on deaf ears.”
Their discussion was interrupted by the barista, delivering a large cup of hot cocoa to Harriet. As she sipped, the rest of the group arrived in rapid succession, including a member she hadn’t seen in nearly six months—Jenny Logan.
“Hey,” she said when Jenny came over with her cup of coffee. She stood up and leaned in for a hug. “I’m glad to see you back with the Threads.”
“I thought it was time to rejoin polite society,” she said and laughed. “I was visiting my son and daughter-in-law and the grand-prince last month, and when they asked me about my quilting and about all of you, I admitted I’d been staying home.” She sipped her coffee.
“Mark took me by the shoulders, looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Mom, the only one who cares about what happened when you were a teenager is you. Your friends have known you for years, and they miss the person they know and love.’”
Her eyes filled with tears. A quilt Jenny had made as a teenager had landed her in the middle of a murder investigation earlier in the year.
Harriet patted her on the back.
“He’s right, you know. Everyone has a past. What we care about is now, and we’ve missed you.”
Lauren pulled out the chair on the other side of her for Jenny.
“You don’t even want to know what I’ve been hiding in my past.” She looked at Harriet. “And no, I won’t tell you, now or anytime soon.”
“So, tell me what’s happened since I went offline.” Jenny looked at Harriet and then Lauren, who were staring at each other. Finally, they both laughed.
“Let’s just catch you up on the current crisis,” Harriet told her. “You probably read about the other stuff in the paper, and it would take our whole meeting time to explain.” She then proceeded to do just that.
“Poor DeAnn. That’s horrible, but I can’t say it’s a complete surprise. I got to know DeAnn’s mother from when she worked at the video store—we were both on a downtown beautification project committee. I know she was very worried about Molly’s obsession with Amber’s disappearance. When she got involved in the missing-and-exploited children project, she was going to some pretty scary places trying to find out who was taking kids.”
“We’re making quilts to give to some of Molly’s major donors at a fund-raiser she’d planned here in town,” Harriet said.
Lauren stirred her caramel latte with a plastic stir-stick.
“Molly was pressuring Harriet and me and the rest of the Threads, too, to try to solve the mystery of Amber’s disappearance. We tried to explain to her that we aren’t private detectives or anything, but she wasn’t hearing it.”
Jenny looked thoughtful.
“Is it safe to assume that now you feel guilty and are trying to figure out what happened to Molly?”
Harriet’s face turned pink.
“Something like that.”
Jenny set her purse under her chair and looked at Robin, who had settled in a chair at the head of the table.
“You’re still the group scribe?”
Robin smiled and pulled a yellow legal tablet and pen from her tote bag.
“Good to have you back, Jenny.”
Connie hurried in the door and swept by the counter to pick up a drink she must have phone-ordered.
“Sorry I’m late. I had to stop by Beth’s to drop off a clay ice pack I have. And before you all ask, she’s sore and tired, but otherwise okay; and she hasn’t heard anything from the police about who did this to her.”
Harriet already knew this, since she’d called her aunt on her way to the coffee shop. Still, it was good to have someone report who had actually laid eyes on her, in spite of the fact they’d all disturbed her aunt’s rest.
“We should get on with the matter at hand,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
“There’s no shortage of suspects,” Lauren said.
Robin drew a line across the top of the page.
“Who is our top suspect?”
Harriet propped both elbows on the table and clasped her hands.
“If you look only at her current situation and don’t mix in her job or her past, I’d put Josh Phillips at the top of the list.”
Lauren swept her long blond hair away from her face in a signature move.
“Well, playing by those rules, the new poet friend should go up there, too. You know how those crime shows always tell us our nearest and dearest are our greatest danger.”
Connie pursed her lips.
“If you use that logic, we have to add DeAnn and her parents, and I don’t think anyone wants to do that.”
Carla’s cheeks turned pink.
“You don’t really think DeAnn would kill her sister, do you?”
Connie reached over and patted her hand.
“No, I don’t. That family was more concerned with helping Molly than anything else.”
Jenny cleared her throat.
“Are any of the people who were suspects when she was little still around?”
“Leo Tabor,” Mavis offered.
Harriet and Lauren looked at each other.
“We talked to him,” Harriet began. “And anything is possible, but I…” She glanced at Lauren again. “…we don’t think he had anything to do with Amber Price’s death. His only crime was trying to get her parents to keep better track of her.”
“James’s mother and her friend think a guy named Gary Alexander may have been involved in Amber’s disappearance. He lived on the street and had gone to prison for domestic battery,” Harriet said.
Robin wrote his name down.
“I’m not sure criminals switch their pattern like that, but violent is violent, I guess.”
Carla tilted her head slightly and looked at Robin.
“Most people who commit crimes do the same crime,” Robin explained, “or follow a progression of increasingly violent versions of the same thing. A kid who steals candy in grade school may shoplift candy bars in junior high school and then rob houses in high school, but he wouldn’t shoplift and then molest children and then set fires. At least, not usually.”
Harriet sat back in her chair and thought for a minute.
“What about the guy in the homeless camp who found Molly back then. I think he’s still around. If he murdered Amber and hit Molly, and she went back to talk to him, maybe he finished what he started. It’s possible he was in the process of killing Molly twenty years ago, and someone interrupted him. He could have said he found her when really he was the person who took her there in the first place.”
“What’s his name,” Robin asked.
“Max,” Harriet replied.
“I think a lot of people refer to him as Mad Max,” Lauren added.
Robin added his name to the list.
“Do we know about her work?” Carla asked. “Maybe she found a missing child, and someone went to jail.”
Lauren leaned forward so she could see Carla.
“Good point, Grasshopper. I can go to the local office of Molly’s non-profit and see if I can sweet talk th
em into taking a look at her computer.”
Carla’s face turned a deeper shade of red.
“I’d like to have a chat with the psychic she contacted,” Harriet said.
“The psychic wouldn’t be in business long if he or she went around killing clients,” Connie argued.
Harriet laughed.
“You’re assuming she met with a real psychic. The killer could have offered his services as a psychic, and we all know Molly would have jumped at the chance.”
Connie’s shoulders sagged.
“You’re right.”
The group sat in silent thought. Robin set her pen down.
“This is off-topic, but have the police followed up on where Juana was when your aunt’s car was tampered with?”
“I haven’t heard anything,” Harriet said and looked down the table to Connie and Mavis.
“Beth hadn’t heard anything when I was there this morning,” Mavis said. “And while we’re off topic, how are we doing on the quilts for the benefit?”
Harriet blew a breath out and leaned back in her chair.
“I’ve got the one Mavis, Carla, Lauren and I did on the machine now. The Aunt Beth, Robin, DeAnn and Connie one is prepped and ready to go on the machine when the first one is finished. I’m still waiting on the third one.”
Carla pulled a plastic bag with quilt squares in it from her purse.
“I’ve got my blocks done for that one.”
“I’m finished with mine, too,” Robin said. “And I’ll go over and get whatever DeAnn’s done from her and finish what I need to.”
“We’ve got a few days for that one,” Harriet looked up at the ceiling and calculated in her head. “Today is Tuesday. It’ll take most of the week to finish the two I have. If the third one is ready to go on as soon as I finish, I can get it done by next Monday or Tuesday. That’ll give us the rest of the week to bind them. And people can start binding the first two when they each come off the machine.”
Jenny held up her hand as if asking permission to speak.
Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 9) Page 9
