Harriet craned her neck to see up the hill from the side window, but they’d reached a section of the road that had mature trees and shrubs on both sides, obscuring the view.
“Something’s going on at your house,” Lauren said as she slowed to make the turn into the driveway.
She pointed, and Harriet could now clearly see two Foggy Point police cars parked behind a red fire truck. She threw her door open and jumped out before Lauren had fully stopped, causing her to slam on the brakes, and began running toward the house. She stopped when James grabbed her around the waist.
“Let me go,” she shouted.
“You can’t go up there right now. The fire is out, but they have to check before anyone is allowed back in.”
“Fire? My house was on fire?” She slumped, and he held her tighter, preventing her from falling to her knees.
“Fred is fine—he’s locked in my van. It’s okay,” he told her. “I got here just after the fire started, and I called nine-one-one and then got my car’s fire extinguisher out. I would have broken a window to get in, but the door was open. When I had the fire out, I looked for the dog, grabbed the cat and waited for the fire truck. Your dog is with you, right?”
Harriet took a deep breath.
“He’s with Mavis. What happened? Was it an electrical fire? Did I leave an iron on? I haven’t ironed anything today. Oh, no, Fred! Is he really okay?”
“Fred is fine. I’m no vet, but he was upstairs the whole time. I don’t think he even knows there was a fire.”
Tears streamed down her face.
“I want to see it.”
James handed her a kitchen towel, and she dabbed at her eyes.
“I don’t think they’re going to let you in yet. Let’s go sit in the van, and I’ll tell you what I know.” He led her to his catering vehicle and opened the side door. “Here, sit.”
He grabbed another towel and spread it out on the floor edge for her to sit on then dug around in a cooler behind her and came out with three chocolate brownies. Lauren joined them, and he scooted closer to Harriet to make a place for her to sit. When she was settled, he handed each of them a brownie before speaking.
“We’ll have to wait and see what the firemen say about what started the fire, but what I saw was a wastebasket sitting next to your big quilting machine with flames coming from it. I think there’s no doubt it was arson.” He looked down at his brownie.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Harriet asked. Fred came out from behind one of the big catering coolers that were permanent fixtures in the van; he head-butted her, and she set her brownie down and swept him into her arms, burying her face in his fur.
James hesitated before reaching behind her. He dug two bottles of water from a case and handed one to Lauren and another to Harriet before speaking.
“What aren’t you telling us,” she pressed.
“Someone did a number on your quilting machine. I don’t know how badly it’s hurt, but it looks like someone took a sledgehammer to it. The fire seemed like an afterthought, maybe an attempt to obscure evidence. The only thing the wastebasket was close to was the metal framework of your machine, and that was never going to catch on fire.”
She stood up, and he grabbed at her and she danced out of his reach.
“I have to go see how bad my machine is.”
Just then, Mavis drove up; Harriet waited as she got out and hurried over to them.
“Oh, honey, are you okay? Lauren called me, and I came as quickly as I could.” She pulled Harriet into a hug.
Lauren went over to the police car, chatted with the patrolman and came back.
“They called Darcy and the rest of her bunch to come process the scene.” Darcy Lewis was a quilter and sometime Loose Thread who worked for a tri-county criminalist team.
Mavis loosened her hug but kept an arm around Harriet. She looked at Lauren.
“So they’ve determined the fire was arson?”
James repeated what he’d seen.
“I asked the officer when you can get into your house,” Lauren continued, “and he said it wouldn’t be any time soon. He also said he could call you on your cell when they’re ready to talk to you.”
“In that case, I think we should go to Beth’s house and tell her what’s going on,” Mavis decided. “You know Jorge has a police scanner, and he’ll tell her, and she’ll be in a state until she sees for herself that you’re okay.”
Harriet turned to James.
“Can you come to my aunt’s? Fred’s not a great traveler, and I think he’ll do better if he can stay in the dark back of your van for the trip over there.”
“I’d be happy to be the kitty transport.”
Harriet gave him a weak smile and got into the passenger seat of the van while Lauren and Mavis returned to their own vehicles, and they all drove to Beth’s cottage.
The door to the cottage opened, and Jorge pulled Harriet inside.
“I thought I’d have to tie your aunt down to keep her from racing to your place the minute we heard on the scanner about the fire.”
“What happened?” Beth demanded when Harriet reached her recliner. “Is the house still standing? Are Fred and Scooter okay?” She started to get up, but Harriet kneeled beside the chair and took her hand.
“Scooter is at Mavis’s house, and Fred is outside in James’s van, and everyone is fine.” She turned her head to look for James, who was coming through the door behind Lauren. “James came by my house right after some-one set a wastebasket on fire. He had an extinguisher in his van and was able to put the fire out.”
“It was pure luck,” James added. “I went by Harriet’s to drop off another round of test truffles…” He trailed off.
“Sounds like it was a good thing you did,” Jorge said.
Mavis shrugged her coat off and dropped it on the back of the sofa.
“Shall I make tea?”
“I’ve got the kettle on already,” Jorge told her. “Here, sit down.”
He stood and pointed to the seat next to Beth he’d just vacated. Mavis smiled at him gratefully and sat down.
“Why would someone want to destroy Harriet’s quilting machine?” Lauren said thoughtfully as she joined Mavis.
“Do you really have to ask that question?” Jorge said from the kitchen.
“Wait a minute,” Beth said. “What happened to the quilt machine?”
“We’d already decided to stop investigating,” Harriet protested.
“What about the machine,” Beth demanded.
Harriet looked at her aunt.
“I haven’t seen it yet, but James has, and he said it’s destroyed.”
Lauren leaned back on the sofa.
“And yet there we were in Seattle,” Lauren continued the first discussion. “The casual observer would think we were still on the case.”
“So, somehow our seminary student was threatened by us going to Seattle and teleported from Spokane to burn my studio?” Harriet smirked. “I’d sooner believe a rival wanted to put me out of business.”
“Have you got a better explanation for someone breaking in and trying to destroy the place?”
“Blondie has a point,” Jorge said as he carried in a tray of teacups and set it on the coffee table. “No one knew you were bowing out of the mystery of Molly but yourselves.”
Aunt Beth smiled at him.
“He’s right. Our group hasn’t advertised the fact we were trying to help Molly, but we have been making inquiries. More important, Molly was so obsessed with her past she probably told anyone who would listen.”
James came to Harriet and took her free hand.
“Come, sit down.”
She got up, and he led her to the sofa then made her a cup of tea and handed it to her, wrapping his hands around hers briefly as he gave it to her. She took a sip, and he settled on the floor next to the her.
“Is there any possibility this isn’t related to Molly at all?” he asked. “I mean, the whole group has been
looking into Molly’s past and now her murder, but only Beth and Harriet have been targeted. It doesn’t seem possible the two incidents aren’t related. Is it possible this is about something else and not about Molly at all?”
Harriet pressed her lips together, considering that thought. Beth started to speak then stopped and looked at her.
“I can’t imagine a reason anyone would have to target us,” she finally said. “I suppose it could have something to do with your parents given their stature as international scientists. It’s hard to believe bothering us would accomplish anything. They certainly wouldn’t come here to check on us if that’s what someone was hoping.”
That was an understatement, Harriet thought. If they hadn’t sent her to stay with Aunt Beth in between boarding schools when she was young, she’d have never known either one of them even knew Foggy Point existed. In fact, she wasn’t sure her father had ever been here. Her mother had left when she started college at the age of sixteen and had never looked back and never mentioned it.
“That would also mean there was a much larger conspiracy going on and I don’t believe that’s true. Unless something has changed, my parents aren’t involved in anything that would create that sort of enemies.”
Jorge set a steaming cup of tea on the table beside Beth’s chair.
“The boy has a point, though. It is odd that no one else has been harmed. Blondie has been with Harriet when she’s been talking to people, and she’s not been targeted.”
James turned to look up at Harriet.
“How rich are your parents?” Didn’t you say they’d invented something that had commercial value?” He continued. “Maybe there is a financial motive for someone to get at them through you two?”
Lauren smiled.
“Don’t you think they would kidnap them and hold them for ransom, if that were the case?”
“Maybe.” One corner of his mouth curled into a half-smile. “What if they don’t know how to find, or get in touch with the wealthy parents? When your mother didn’t come after Beth was injured, they upped the ante by trying to burn the house down.”
Harriet looked at her aunt and laughed. Beth tried to remain serious, but then she laughed, too.
“Anyone who knows anything about my sister and her husband would realize that nothing, and I mean nothing, would bring them back here.”
“They’d send their representative, a very scary woman who acts as secretary, travel agent and all-around girl Friday,” Harriet said, still chuckling.
Mavis cleared her throat.
“I don’t mean to take attention away from a serious situation, but it occurs to me we still have another quilt to finish before the benefit, and without your machine, we need to come up with a plan.”
Beth put her hand over her mouth.
“I didn’t even think of that.”
“Of course—you were worried about Harriet, but I’ve been thinking. It’s hard to stitch a quilt of that size on a home sewing machine, but the church has a quilting frame in their storage area. I know we only have a few days, but if everyone available could take shifts hand-quilting, I think we could get it done.”
“It could work,” Beth said. “I can help stitch. I’m sure we can figure out how to keep my foot up once I get there.”
“I’ll text the team,” Lauren told them and began tapping on her phone.
Chapter 19
Once the rest of the Threads had been notified of the change in plan, Jorge got up to refill cups. Harriet leaned her head against the back of the sofa, lost in thought, while Lauren stared at her phone, willing the absentee Threads to reply to her texts. Beth and Mavis had each pulled hand-piecing projects from their ever-present canvas quilting bags and were stitching quietly.
James smiled at Harriet.
A loud knock on the front door startled them and set Beth’s dog to barking.
“Everyone, stay where you are,” Jorge boomed from the kitchen. “I’ll get it.”
He wiped his hands on the dish towel he was carrying and took a moment to look through the peephole before opening the door.
“Detective Morse, come in,” he said and held the door open. He continued holding it open, blocking Brownie with his foot. “Connie is coming,” he explained.
“This isn’t a good time to talk about Amber’s disappearance,” Beth said to Morse.
“I’m not here about that. There was some sort of gang shooting down at the docks tonight, so the on-call detectives are all down there. I was called in to come interview you-all about the break-in and fire at Harriet’s.”
Harriet looked at her hopefully.
“Have you been to my house?”
“I did swing by and take a look.”
Connie came in, dropped her purse and jacket and crossed the room to pull Harriet into an awkward hug.
“Diós mio! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Harriet said in a voice muffled by the fact her face was buried in Connie’s shoulder.
Connie released her grip and studied her closely.
“You weren’t hurt by the fire?”
“It was just a wastebasket,” Morse answered for her. “Harriet wasn’t home, and her friend James seems to have arrived right after it was set.” Morse looked at James, with one eyebrow raised in a questioning arch.
“I was bringing truffles,” he stammered. “And the door was open.” His face turned red.
“Lauren and I were just getting home from Seattle…” Harriet volunteered then paused. “Wait a minute.” She looked at James. “You said my door was open? How did someone get past my burglar alarm?”
He shrugged. “It was open, and the alarm wasn’t going off when I got there.”
Jorge brought in a cup of tea for Morse. He took her jacket and hung it on the coat closet doorknob and handed her a napkin. He carefully set it on the coffee table then went to the dining area and brought chairs for Morse and Connie; everyone sat down.
Morse sipped her tea.
“This is wonderful,” she told Jorge then returned her attention to Harriet. “I haven’t talked to Darcy and her crew yet, but I noticed one of them was taking pictures of your security system keypad. Some of the keys had black powder on them. This is just a guess, but I think whoever broke in sprayed your keypad with graphite or some other fine dark powder to see which four keys had fingerprints on them. No one ever touches the keys that aren’t part of their code,” she explained.
“The bad guys rapidly cycle through all the combinations using those four keys,” she continued. “They may even have some info as to the most frequently used four-digit codes as a starting point. At any rate, most systems give you at least a minute to enter the code, and you can enter a lot of combinations in that amount of time.”
Harriet ran her hand through her hair.
“What I don’t get is why damage my machine? If they’re trying to run me out of town, the arson attempt sort of makes sense, but why attack the machine?”
Morse leaned back in her chair.
“I think the whole machine/fire thing was an afterthought.”
“What do you mean?” Harriet asked.
“When they let you back in your house, you can check around your desk, but I think your office area was the real target. Someone dug in your files and left some on the floor, and the hard drive on your computer is missing.”
Lauren looked at Harriet.
“You signed up for the back-up service I recommended, right?”
“I did.”
“Whew.” Lauren blew her breath out in a rush. “All you need is a new drive, and we can call all your information back, good as new.”
“I’d like to have a look when you do that. If you don’t mind, that is,” Morse said.
“I hope they’re ready to be disappointed,” Harriet said with a grim smile. “I didn’t have anything related to Molly’s issues on my computer.”
Lauren laughed.
“Little did they know, they should have purse-
snatched Robin’s bag.”
Morse looked at her, confused.
“She makes notes on legal tablets at our meetings,” Harriet explained.
Connie sipped her tea.
“Do you think we need to warn Robin that something might happen?”
Morse pulled a small notebook and pen from her pocket and made a note.
“I doubt most people know who is in your group, and even then, they wouldn’t know who takes notes. Just in case, though, I think I’ll ask for increased patrols in all of your neighborhoods.”
Jorge reappeared from the kitchen with the tea kettle.
“Anyone need a refill?”
Beth smiled up at him, and he topped off her cup.
“Are you sure this has to do with Molly?” he asked when he got to Morse.
“I don’t think we’re sure of anything, but I don’t happen to believe in coincidence. Molly comes to town and asks Harriet and the rest of the Loose Threads to help her solve her mystery from twenty years ago, and then she gets murdered.” Morse raised her eyebrows. “If Beth’s accident and Harriet’s break-in aren’t a result of that, I’ll be amazed. No, I’ll be shocked. Both of those events are related to Molly now and Amber Price in the past. We just don’t know how yet.”
Connie stiffened her back.
“So, what are we supposed to do?”
Morse laughed.
“I feel like a broken record. You all need to do nothing. Finish your quilts, go to the benefit, and let us take care of the bad guys.”
“What if we’re making a quilt for the bad guy?” Lauren asked.
“Just stay away from him and everyone else related to this case. We’ll have plainclothes policemen at the award ceremony, just in case.”
Harriet sighed.
“Can I go home?”
Morse sipped her tea, and then pressed her lips together firmly.
“You should plan on staying somewhere else tonight,” she finally said. “The fire department has an arson investigation crew there along with the usual criminalist team. You can call the PD in the morning to be sure they’ve released the scene before you go home.”
Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 9) Page 14
