“Aren’t you going to read it?”
“Not now. We’re having a meeting.”
Stewart stood, unmoving.
“Was there something else?” Robin asked.
“Can you at least tell me if or when you pass it on? I don’t even know when the funeral is. I know you don’t like me and that I only knew Molly a matter of days, but she and I had something real.”
A tear slid down his cheek, and he swiped at it with his balled fist. He hesitated then turned on his heel and swept out of the coffee shop.
Harriet leaned back in her chair and followed him with her eyes until he was out the door.
“Is it just me, or was that weird?”
Carla made eye contact with her.
“Was he wearing eyeliner?”
“And eye shadow,” Lauren answered before Harriet could. “He was rocking the tragic poet look.”
“Be nice,” Connie scolded her. “That might be his work outfit if he’s doing a poetry reading.”
Lauren glanced at the time display on her phone.
“Pretty early for a poetry reading.”
“Maybe he’s still up from last night,” Carla suggested.
Harriet once again wondered what Carla’s childhood had been like that made staying up all night in your party clothes seem such an easy explanation. She drained her mug and set it down, then looked around the table at her friends.
“Everyone ready to head over to the church?”
Mavis slid her project back into her bag.
“The sooner we start, the sooner we finish,” she announced and stood up.
“You can leave your cups,” the young man behind the counter called to them. “I’ll get them.”
Everyone thanked him, and they all went to their respective cars and left.
Aunt Beth was already in the church basement sitting beside the quilting frame when the group arrived. Her foot was propped up on a pillow that was held to her knee scooter with a bungee cord. Marjorie came in carrying a pillow-shaped bag of quilt batting.
“Lauren called and asked if I could make an emergency delivery.”
She opened the package and gently pulled out the large folded quilt bat.
“How do we do this?” Carla asked.
Jenny had the folded quilt top inside a pillowcase. She pulled another folded piece of fabric from the case.
“I hope no one minds that I went ahead and bought some extra-wide backing fabric. I thought it would be easier than piecing the back—and that was before we decided to hand-quilt.”
“Thank you for that,” Aunt Beth said. “I was wondering what we were going to do. I had Jorge bring my portable sewing machine and some muslin, but this will be much easier.
Harriet and Lauren pushed several of the large cafeteria tables together, and Jenny laid her piece of backing fabric down. Marjorie added the batting and Jenny carefully unfolded the quilt top onto the two layers.
Mavis handed Carla a spool of thread and a needle.
“First thing we need to do is baste the quilt sandwich together, just like when you’re going to quilt on your sewing machine.”
Harriet and Lauren threaded needles with the pink basting thread when Carla was ready.
“Smooth the layers as flat and wrinkle-free as you can with your hand and then start basting, starting in the middle,” Mavis continued and then stopped. They all heard someone clattering down the steps to the basement.
Harriet stopped what she was doing as well and stared at the open door that led to the stairs. Josh Phillips rushed in and strode over to them.
“Oh, good—I found you in time.”
“And you are?” Connie demanded as she joined the others by the table.
“Meet Josh Phillips,” Harriet told her. “Molly’s ex-boyfriend.”
Josh turned to face her.
“And you are?”
“Never mind who I am. We’re busy. What do you want?”
“Now that Molly’s dead, I want to cancel my quilt order.”
“Your what?” Harriet, Mavis and Connie all said at the same time.
Lauren smirked.
“This day just keeps getting better.”
“I think you’re confusing us with the other quilt group in town,” Mavis said. “We aren’t doing a commission quilt. This quilt is a thank-you for your donation.”
“I’m not confused. This is the quilt I paid ten thousand dollars for. I don’t want it anymore. Since you haven’t made it yet, I’m canceling my order. Now, is anyone from the missing children place here? I went by the offices, but I couldn’t find anyone. I stopped at the quilt store and they said you were here. And luckily I found you before you finished my quilt.”
“You didn’t order a quilt.” Harriet told him, her voice rising.
“Call it what you want, I’m withdrawing my donation. If you want to thank me with a quilt, feel free. I’m going back to Seattle. When you talk to the missing children people, tell them now that Molly’s gone, so is my money.”
The big blond man pivoted and left the way he’d come in.
“Can he do that?” Lauren asked Robin.
“It depends. A pledge is a legally enforceable contract, but in Washington, it needs to be in writing. If he’s given them the money already, and he signed a pledge contract, he’s out of luck. He’s beyond any conceivable buyer’s remorse period. I don’t think that would apply, anyway.
“If he hasn’t actually transferred the money yet, it’s a different story. They’d have to sue him to get it. Most nonprofits are afraid they’ll scare off future donors and seem greedy if they take a donor to court, so they just accept the loss.”
Harriet pulled a chair out from the table and sat down.
“So, where does that leave us and our quilt?”
“Since we don’t know which of those we’re dealing with, I think we need to forge ahead with it,” Mavis advised.
Connie picked up a box of thumbtacks and went around to the end of the quilt frame.
“I agree with Mavis. Until the people at the nonprofit tell us otherwise, we need to have three quilts ready for their fundraiser, and this one isn’t going to stitch itself.”
Lauren shook her head.
“This day just keeps on getting weirder.”
Carla raised her hand.
“Oh, honey, you don’t need to do that when you want to speak,” Mavis scolded her gently.
The young woman’s cheeks turned pink as she spoke.
“What are the thumbtacks for?”
The group spent the next half-hour showing Carla how the thumbtacks were used to hold the quilt sandwich to the wooden quilt frame.
Harriet stood up several hours later, grasping the back of her chair and bending back at the waist to stretch.
“Do we have a lunch plan?”
“We haven’t done Chinese in a while,” Lauren suggested.
Robin stabbed her needle into the quilt top.
“Sounds good to me. And while we’re at lunch, I thought I’d call the missing children center and see if our reluctant philanthropist Josh has approached them about retracting his pledge.”
Carla looked at Harriet.
“Should we call the second psychic?”
Harriet studied the ceiling.
“I’m torn. I had decided I was out of the investigating business. Now, with my machine and my house under attack, I’m not so sure.”
Connie slid her chair back from the quilt frame.
“We can’t give up now. What will we tell DeAnn? And what about Beth? Can you let it go, not knowing who hurt her?”
Mavis stood up and stretched as well.
“I don’t want to see any of us put ourselves in harm’s way unnecessarily, but what if whoever sabotaged Beth’s car and broke into your house isn’t done? If we do nothing, and another one of us suffers some sort of harm, we’ll feel terrible.”
Lauren set her needle down on the quilt surface.
“Besides all that, don’t you want reve
nge for your machine?”
“Lauren, it’s just a machine. An insured one, at that,” Beth said.
Harriet looked at her friend. Her eyes narrowed.
“You’re right. It was my machine.”
“Hold on a minute,” Beth cautioned. “Maybe we should consider the possibility that anything else we do could cause whoever is responsible for my car and Harriet’s house and machine to do something worse.”
“That could happen anyway,” Lauren countered.
Robin paced the length of the quilt frame and turned to face the group.
“I don’t advocate taking the law into our own hands. It never ends well when citizens try to do the job of the police. That being said, I do think DeAnn’s family deserve answers. Molly may have been obsessed with the disappearance of Amber Price, but that doesn’t mean she was wrong to try to find out what happened.
“The police have had twenty years to come up with something, and they haven’t. We need to be careful, but if we can figure out what happened to Amber, it might go a long way toward explaining what happened to Molly.”
Mavis and Beth exchanged a look.
“Robin, are you sure you’re thinking straight?” Mavis asked her gently. “DeAnn is your best friend and that may be clouding your judgment.”
“I’m not suggesting we do anything wild, but following up with Molly’s psychic shouldn’t step on anyone’s toes.”
“How do you feel about us talking to Molly’s co-workers again?” Harriet asked. “We need to discuss this quilt with them, anyway. Maybe if we get them going they’ll reveal something they didn’t think of when we were there before.”
Robin thought for a moment.
“That should be okay, too, as long as you’re really subtle. Let them do all the talking.”
Lauren slung her messenger bag over her shoulder.
“Now that we’ve sorted that, can we go to lunch? I’m starving.”
Chapter 21
Harriet slid her phone into her pocket as she returned from the foyer to the round table in the back of the Chinese restaurant.
“We can’t see the psychic until tomorrow at ten o’clock. Does anyone mind if I take a few minutes to drive over to the missing children center on the way back to quilting?”
“As long as you don’t go alone, I think that would be okay,” Aunt Beth answered for the group.
Lauren waved her hand.
“I’ll go. She needs a driver, anyway, if I’m not mistaken.”
Harriet laughed.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot that little detail.”
Robin wiped her mouth and set her napkin on the table beside her plate.
“Until Molly’s killer is caught, I think we’d all be wise to travel in pairs.”
“Does Wendy count?” Carla asked.
Connie straightened her spine and pressed her lips together and Harriet knew she was transforming into teacher mode.
“Hey! Not one of us has thought about Carla and Wendy during all this.” She glanced at Harriet but continued speaking. “With Aiden out of town, they’re alone in that big house. And if I’m not mistaken, Terry won’t be back for another two weeks.”
Terry, Carla’s boyfriend, was in the Navy Criminal Investigation Service, based out of Naval Base Kitsop Bangor in Silverdale. His schedule was unpredictable, but they were making their relationship work.
Mavis sucked her breath in.
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry we’ve been neglecting you.”
Carla looked from Mavis to Beth and then Harriet to Lauren.
“Don’t you all live alone?”
Harriet had to admit the girl had a point. She might be young, but with the upbringing she’d had, she was likely better equipped to deal with trouble than most of the Threads.
“None of them live in such an isolated location,” Connie said. “It’s true Harriet’s house sits off the street, but Aiden’s is also surrounded by hedges and woods and is much farther from the road.”
Carla slipped into her jacket.
“I can bring the dog into the house. She barks at everything.”
“That will help,” Connie told her.”But maybe you and Wendy should sleep at my house until this is all over.”
Harriet opened her wallet and counted bills out then set them on the plastic dish beside her plate. She looked at Robin.
“Do you really think the situation warrants disrupting Carla and Wendy’s lives like that?”
Robin sighed.
“I don’t know. Without knowing if Beth’s car sabotage and your break-in are connected, and whether they’re related to Molly’s murder, it’s hard to say if we’re overreacting. But, if there’s a chance at all it’s the same person or persons, we’d be wise to take every precaution we can.”
Connie smiled at Carla.
“I’ll call Grandpa Rod and tell him to prepare for company.”
“Do we know the name of the office manager?” Harriet asked Lauren as they pulled in to The Carey Bates Organization. This time there were no other cars in the parking lot.
“No, we don’t, but I’m sure Mr. Google can tell us.”
Harriet pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped the organization name into the search engine.
“The office manager is one Nancy Finley. I think she was the one in the gray linen suit when we were here before. Carla said her young friend’s name is Sadie. The only other name listed as staff is Patrice Orson.”
“I guess she was the one in the sari. I may be wrong, but from what you told me about your last visit, I think she’s the one we want to talk to. We can ask the manager, but she might not be inclined to talk about a situation that could end up in court.”
“I agree. What if you ask her about Molly’s files on Amber Price’s disappearance? Tell her you just want to read them. And it isn’t a lie. I do want to know what Molly had, just in case she made any notes about her psychic visit and what it was that triggered her memory. It’s probably too much to hope that she actually documented her recovered memory.
“Anyway, I’m hoping Nancy’ll take you to her office or to the space Molly was using. I’ll hang around in the waiting area and see if I can get Patrice talking.”
Harriet accepted a cup of coffee from Patrice as she sat in an overstuffed chair that had seen better days in the reception area. She was amazed at how easily Lauren had convinced Nancy of her need to read Molly’s file on Amber.
“Can I get you anything else?” Patrice asked her.
Harriet shook her head.
“I can’t believe Molly’s gone.”
Patrice slid into the mismatched chair opposite her.
“I can’t, either. We’ve been having trouble concentrating on work, knowing her killer is still out there. I mean, what if it was retaliation for one of the cases she worked on? Everyone knew she was helping us, and since we joined her, we not only brought four kids home but we also were instrumental in putting three people in jail. Each of them was a low-level operator in a bigger enterprise.”
“If they were low level, their bosses probably wouldn’t want to draw attention to themselves by seeking revenge. I wonder about her boyfriend. He came by the Methodist Church where we’re quilting. He’s a real piece of work.”
“That cute poet? I thought he seemed nice, in a dark and tortured sort of way.”
“Oh, no. I meant her ex-boyfriend. Josh Phillips. He was ranting about not wanting our quilt any more.”
“I’m sorry he pestered you like that. We do appreciate all the hard work you’re doing making those quilts.”
“Do you think he’ll follow through with his threat to withdraw his pledge?” Harriet tried to infuse her comment with concern.
Patrice’s laugh came out more like a bark.
“He can try, but Nancy’s a sharp one. Molly wasn’t here when he came in to donate, so she wrote the paper on his pledge. He signed a contract, and not only that, she made him write a check for half the amount on the spot.”
&
nbsp; “That’s a relief. No matter what, you’ll have five thousand dollars.”
“We’ve been burned before. It’s a real problem when people pledge money to us, and we get grants that depend on matching funds, and the pledge falls through, dragging the grant money with it. Nancy consulted a lawyer to figure out how to protect against it. Now, she insists on an upfront partial payment and a binding contract, including a clause agreeing that they will pay the legal fees if we have to collect our money in court.”
“Wow, that sounds thorough.”
“Well, that’s our Nancy. Josh Phillips has no idea.”
“I need to get going. We’re hand-quilting that third quilt. Could you possibly check on my friend?”
“Sure, you finish your coffee, and I’ll see if I can shake her loose.”
She returned followed by Nancy and Lauren.
“I’m sorry we took your time without calling ahead,” Lauren told Nancy.
Nancy’s brows drew together.
“It’s no problem. Until someone figures out what happened to Molly, we find ourselves paralyzed. We don’t know if our efforts contributed to her murder. If so, we don’t know which of our cases were involved. The number of missing children in our area is staggering. On any given day, we’re actively following up on half a dozen local kids who are missing.
“Lately, because of Molly’s organization, we’ve been networking with more than a dozen other missing persons groups. Those groups have asked us to research an increasing number of missing people who were last seen in our general area. It could be any of them.”
Harriet stood up.
“So, how long have you been working with Molly?”
Nancy looked up and put her hand on the side of her face.
“Seems like a long time, but I guess, in reality, it’s only been a few months.” She looked at Patrice. “Do you remember when we started working with her?”
“It was right after Christmas. Remember? We were making our resolutions for the new year, and Molly came in and changed everything.”
“You’re right. It was six months ago.”
Lauren slid her tablet computer from her bag and tapped it awake before typing herself a note and then putting it back to sleep.
“If you’ll email a list of names of the external cases you’ve been working on,” she offered. “I’ll see what I can find out. I may have a few resources that are different from the ones you’ve already pursued.”
Disappearing Nine Patch (A Harriet Truman/Loose Threads Mystery Book 9) Page 16
