Monkey Wrench

by Terri Thayer

  I needed a new tactic. Freddy and Buster’s ideas could lead to a solution that would take care of the problem but no one was listening.

  “Ladies,” Barb V said. The chatter continued.

  Barb V looked at me. She leaned toward me. I moved closer in order to hear her over the din.

  “Your mother would be so disappointed in you,” she hissed softly.

  My head snapped back. How dare she invoke my mother.

  “This is not what she envisioned when we started the Quilters Crawl,” Barb V continued. Her lips were wet and she was spitting.

  I tried to stand up. I wasn’t going to let Barb V get away with this. My mother was off limits.

  Two hands were on my shoulders, seemingly friendly but restraining me. I craned my neck to see that it was Freddy holding me back. He was shaking his head, and making comforting, murmuring noises. Like I was a horse that needed to be stilled.

  Barb V had not taken her eyes off me. Her chin was up and her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her face was triumphant.

  All she wanted to do was maintain the status quo. That’s all that was important to her. That nothing changes. Ever.

  I felt Freddy loosen his grip. I stood, kicking my chair back. But Freddy had let go for a reason. Buster was right behind me.

  No one noticed. The shop owners were still squabbling. Freddy took a step away from me as if respecting Buster’s territory.

  Buster handed me a note. He whispered in my ear. “Lois overdosed.”

  I felt my face twist in disbelief. Freddy moved closer and saw the note in my hand. He picked it up and waved it like a cape.

  “It wasn’t the Quilters Crawl that killed Lois,” he crowed. “She took too many drugs.”

  The chatter ceased immediately. A disembodied voice said, “Hello?” from the phone.

  All eyes were on me. I looked to Buster. He had plenty of experience giving people bad news. His face was neutral. He squared his shoulders to the group.

  Buster took the piece of paper from Freddy. “All we know for sure is that she had drugs in her system that killed her. She might have taken the wrong combination or had a bad interaction with two or more drugs.”

  Freddy was instantly chagrined. “I’m sorry, man, that’s not what

  I meant. I’m just happy because I didn’t cause her death.”

  “I get that, dude. I totally do. It’s okay.” Buster clamped a hand on Freddy’s shoulder and squeezed.

  The bromance continued.

  Everyone started talking at once again. I shut it all out. I wondered if that was all there was to it. Perhaps she had mixed up her medications, but there was another possibility. Zorn had suggested that she was murdered. Like Wyatt.

  Buster held up a hand and the group quieted. “The police are investigating,” Buster said. “I know the detective in charge. He’s a good man. He’ll figure it out. I wanted to let you folks know that the Quilters Crawl had nothing to do with Lois’s death. You should be fine to carry on. I recommend making the changes Freddy suggested.”

  Freddy beamed.

  Barb V had gone rigid, her back straighter than before and her lips so thin that they were barely visible. Barbara the Damp was watching Barb V’s expression closely.

  Cookie stood. She clapped her hands together. “We all have to get back to our stores. Let’s do what he says. Scale back the Twitter promotion. The remaining shops should be able to get their chance

  at it. We’ll implement the changes. No time limit, don’t need to be present to win. Dewey, can you email those to the stores that are affected, outlining the new rules?”

  I nodded. Barb V pushed away from the table. She stuffed the handouts that she’d copied and never handed out back into her briefcase and walked out without another word. She’d lost this round.

  Barbara the Damp followed. She stopped next to me. She pinched my upper arm hard. “You’ll regret the day you made an enemy of the Barbaras.”

  Sixteen

  The meeting broke up quickly with the owners needing to get to work. Buster walked Freddy out and went home. I had an hour before opening.

  What had really happened to Lois? Zorn was trying to link Vangie with Lois.

  I opened Lois’s purse. Her passport would tell me where she’d been. The QP stamp was there, along with five others. I pulled out the Crawl map from under my laptop. I got out a Sharpie and put a red X next to QP.

  It was impossible to tell where she went next, but logic would dictate the most direct route. Tracing her steps might tell me something.

  I marked an X by the Half Moon Shop. She’d gotten there. I wondered if she took time to drive to the ocean. The bluffs there were a great place to walk. It was sad to think her last days on earth had been spent driving around to quilt shops. I hoped she’d at least taken a glance at the ocean.

  She’d been to the San Mateo shop, Barb V’s in Redwood City. All the local ones. She hadn’t ventured over to Fremont or over 17 to the coastal shops. She was sticking close to home.

  And Santa Clara. A stamp from Freddy. The day before she was killed. She had to have returned to Roman’s Sewing Machines for the special Twitter prize.

  I called Freddy. “Listen to this, I said. “Lois was at your place on Wednesday.”

  Freddy sighed. “Okay, but so what? I told you I didn’t recognize her. Neither did the Ikea twins. She must have come back for the Twitter event. A lot of people did.”

  “But she had a stupid phone.”

  Freddy was driving, listening to an obnoxious drive-time crew. He turned off the radio.

  “Huh?”

  “Listen to me. She was in my store last week. I tried to set her up on Twitter, but she didn’t have the right kind of phone. Her cell was a basic one. She bought minutes by the month. She didn’t have a data plan, couldn’t get on the Internet. So how did she hear about the Twitter promotion?”

  “Maybe she heard about it at another shop.”

  “She’d have had to be close by. But she’d already gone to all the local shops the day before.”

  “I don’t know then.”

  I had another idea. “Maybe someone directed her there.”

  “Buster said she overdosed. I’m going with that.”

  I bit my lip. I wasn’t going to tell Freddy about Zorn’s theory linking the two deaths. “I’m not saying she was killed, but if she was, it was by someone who knew about the Twitter promotion and your plans.”

  “You don’t think my Ikea twins did it, do you? I know they’re cutthroat, Dewey, but really …”

  Freddy was enjoying teasing me.

  “Gotta go, Freddy.”

  “Wait …”

  I hung up before he could harrass me some more.

  I called Wendy. Her sister had been a witness. After a greeting and a word about the meeting, I said, “You said your sister was at Freddy’s the day that Lois died.”

  “She was. She can’t stop talking about the near riot. She was scared to death.”

  “Poor thing. Would she talk to me, do you think?”

  “Sure. I feel so bad about Lois. I hope she rests in peace. She was in here the first day with her route all written down.”

  That was Lois. She couldn’t even go online without her grandson. There was no way she was savvy enough to understand Freddy’s Twitter promo. Someone sent her there.

  Wendy said, “My sister texted. She’s actually doing the Crawl with a couple of friends. I’ll text her and tell her to talk to you.”

  When Jenn and Ursula came in, they were chattering about the busy day yesterday.

  “Ready for another one?” Ursula asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. I filled them in on the meeting. “We’ll see what happens.”

  “A lot of people are talking about Lois on Twitter,” Jenn said. “Someone even made a memorial page on Facebook.”

  “So sad,” Ursula said. “So sad.”

  Wendy’s sister and her friends were our first customers. Wendy’s sister l
ooked like Wendy, a big woman with a head of curly hair. I pulled her aside and asked her about being at Freddy’s when Lois died.

  “Oh, Dewey, honey. It was truly terrible.” She laid a hand on my arm and I felt her tremble. Her broad cheeks flushed.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m trying to figure out what happened. Did you see Lois go down?” I asked.

  “I did not,” she said.

  “But you saw Barb V?”

  Her eyes opened wide and she nodded. “Right after it happened. I know her, I’ve been in her shop plenty of times. She was walking quickly away. Most people were milling around for a while. That’s why I noticed her. She just took off.”

  “Well, thanks. I wanted to be sure. Barb V says she wasn’t there.”

  She snorted, her curls bouncing. “Of course she would. She was up to something, I’m telling you. She was up to no good.”

  I thanked Wendy and stamped her passport. She rejoined her friends in the Amy Butler aisle.

  Barb V acting weird wasn’t exactly proof of anything. I needed more. I needed Barb V with drugs in her hand. At the very least, I needed Barb V with a reason to kill Lois.

  Maybe Lois wasn’t the target. Was Barb V so determined to keep the Quilters Crawl as is that she would kill anyone? How much did she want the Twitter thing to not succeed?

  Perhaps it didn’t matter who died. She might have poisoned a random person in that crowd. Sprinkled ground-up drugs in someone’s coffee, and waited for them to die. Lois could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  First, I needed to know for sure that she was there. I pulled up Barb V’s picture off her website and printed it out. I would show it around and see if she was anywhere else she shouldn’t have been.

  Freddy’s was the place to start. That’s where Lois died.

  My store was quiet. Ursula, Jenn, and Florence could handle things.

  ———

  Rebekah was standing by the side street, smoking. As she saw me get out of my car, she quickly dropped her cigarette, grinding it out with her black heels.

  I walked toward her. Getting her alone was a bonus. Trying to talk to her with Inez present was tough. Those two couldn’t stop baiting each other and proving the other wrong long enough to give a straight answer.

  “Rebekah, hey.”

  I moved quickly, intercepting her, standing between her and the side door. I glanced inside. This entrance led to the embroidery machine section. A giant machine was punching a design into a baseball cap. No sign of Inez or Freddy.

  “I need to have a word with you about yesterday.”

  Rebekah’s forehead creased and she shook her head. Her short hair didn’t move. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s very disturbing, and I refuse to think about it.”

  “That’s too bad. Inez will talk to me, but I believe you know more than she does.”

  Rebekah sniffed as if the wind had brought us an unpleasant smell from the bay. “She knows nothing. Don’t listen to her. She didn’t see what happened. She was in here, selling a Quilt Expressions 3000. Against Freddy’s rules. There were to be no sales during the Twitter hour.”

  Her mouth closed and her lips thinned.

  “Just let me ask you one question. Not about Lois,” I added hastily. “I’m trying to find out if this woman was here during the Twitter promotion.”

  She turned away, making a move to get around me and get to the door. “Dewey, there were two hundred people here. How can I pick out one?”

  “Give this a quick look.” I held up my picture of Barb V.

  Rebekah glanced my way reluctantly. Her face flooded with recognition. “Barbara Victor? Why would she be here? Her own place was on the Quilters Crawl, no?”

  I pulled the picture back and looked at it myself. Rebekah grabbed the door handle and yanked it open. The noise from the embroidery machine got louder. A movie princess was appearing on a baseball cap.

  “Barbara Victor?” I said.

  “Of course. I used to work for the family. Victor’s Sewing Machines. Before Freddy moved up here, they were the number one shop in the Bay Area.”

  I wanted to be sure we were talking about the same person. “This is the owner of Barb V’s Quilting Emporium?”

  Rebekah relaxed, now that we weren’t talking about the Crawl. “Yeah, when she started out years ago, she didn’t want to cash in on her family’s success. They’re close, really close, but professionally she’s always been known as Barb V.”

  The chime sounded. A customer was in the store. Rebekah’s body tensed and she leaned toward the front door. She was finished with me.

  “I’ve got to get back to work before Inez steals all the good customers.”

  I let the door swing close, and stood on the sidewalk outside Freddy’s shop. Was that Barb V’s motive? To ruin Freddy. Lois may have been a casualty in the sewing machine wars. Barb V might not even have meant to kill Lois. She might have only been trying to cause a scare.

  One that would put an end to the Twitter promotion and Freddy, and return the Quilters Crawl to its former glory. And put Freddy out of business.

  I drove away from Freddy’s without going inside. I had to do a lot of thinking before I could accuse Barb V of murdering Lois. No one would believe that such an outstanding member of the quilting society would kill for profit.

  At the shop, Ursula was alone at the cutting table. She had the contents of the communal drawer out, a job usually reserved for rainy winter days. She’d sorted the junk into piles. Strips of fabric, paperclips and rubber bands, scribbled notes all got their own pile.

  “How’s business?” I asked.

  Ursula shook her head, testing out a ballpoint pen. She tossed it into the trash next to her. “We were busy for the first hour, but then traffic died.”

  Dang it. I’d been hoping this was more of a temporary lull.

  Jenn was studying her phone. Her usually sunny expression was dark. She scrolled through, her finger never leaving the screen.

  I went to her side. “What’s up?”

  She showed me the screen. “There are dozens of tweets about Lois’s death. They’re getting ugly.”

  I looked over her shoulder. The comments were running along the lines of the one posted by @QuiltsGalore. Stay away from the Quilters Crawl. It’s jinxed.

  I scratched my head. “That’s it then. The Crawl might as well be over. It’s dead.”

  Jenn patted my back. “Let’s wait and see. It might not affect business. After all, haven’t we been told over and over how our customers are not online?”

  I frowned, feeling the drag on me like a real weight. “I guess. This is bad, though.”

  Really bad.

  I couldn’t stand sitting around doing nothing. Again. Florence had set up a machine in the classroom and started sewing a block she’d brought from home. Kym stood by the greeting table, attempting to twirl a yardstick.

  I’d nearly made it to the back door when it burst open.

  “Dewey, you’ve got to do something about Vangie.”

  Pearl was in my face, keys dangling from her fingers. I was suddenly glad we had no customers. She looked a bit crazed, her eyes unfocused and glaring.

  She was so loud and shrill, my ears hurt. “Pearl, could you keep it down?”

  Vangie came in behind her. “She’s incapable of moderation right now.”

  Pearl cast her a mean glare. “You are not my friend, anymore.”

  “Oh, but Ross is?” Vangie sniped.

  Kym had stopped twirling and was leaning in. She wasn’t even hiding the fact that she was eavesdropping. If we went into my office, she’d hear everything.

  “Let’s take this upstairs.”

  I led them to the loft classroom.

  ‘What happened?” I said, shooting for some levity. “Vangie leave the toilet seat up again?”

  This time the glare came from Vangie. I could get cut from all these sharp glances.

  Pearl tossed her keys on the nearest table. I ha
dn’t been up here since yesterday. One of her class samples was still hanging on the wall. I was a little sad to see it was her second Manzanar quilt, the one she’d made to replace the one in the museum. Her life had been so rich when she’d made that.

  “What’s going on?” I looked from Vangie to Pearl. Vangie had her arms crossed in front of her chest.

  “Are you going to tell her?” Vangie said. “Or should I?”

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” Pearl said. She crossed her own arms. They faced off like a pair of hip-hop dancers. Attitude galore.

  Maybe it was a sibling rivalry thing. Vangie didn’t like Ross living with Pearl. Pearl and Vangie had always been more like family than friends.

  This was Family Feud.

  “Well?”

  Pearl thinned her lips as if she would never talk again. Vangie sighed and reached into her back pocket.

  She tossed a bottle of pills on the table. They rolled in front of Pearl who snatched them up, holding the amber vial close to her body.

  “What are those?” My heart thudded as I remembered the clinic and the prescription. Was Pearl taking those powerful painkillers?

  “She’s taking Ritalin,” Vangie said.

  Ritalin? The boy in front of me in fifth grade had gone on the stuff. Before the pills, he’d bounce in his chair all day long. I could have kissed the doctor who’d gotten him to sit still. My grades went up along with his.

  “But Ritalin is for kids with attention disorders,” I said.

  Vangie said, “It’s a stimulant. The kids on campus call it Vitamin R. She’s high as a kite right now.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. No wonder she was looking better. And baking and quilting again.

  I looked over the edge of the loft. I couldn’t see Kym but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hear us. I lead them to the back of the classroom where our conversation wouldn’t filter downstairs.

  “Where did you get them?” I asked. “Did your doctor prescribe them?” Was this the same doctor who’d given her Ambien to help her sleep last week? I felt my brain cloud from the possibilities. What did combining these drugs mean? Could she get addicted? Or overdose?

  “Show her the label,” Vangie said.