by Cate Price
Martha frowned. She took her role as Information Central in Millbury quite seriously, and lately Dottie had been intruding on her turf.
“I can think of plenty of reasons for Beau Cassell to be a victim,” Eleanor said, “but why Althea? Yes, she was bossy and intimidating”—and here she looked over at Martha—“but so are some other people.”
“And she gave a lot to charity, and she was a good teacher.” I’d seen from the sampler class that the women respected her. They might not like her, but I didn’t think anyone hated her enough to try to kill her. “It must have been an accident.”
“Well, she’ll be missed at church, seeing as she’s the lead bell ringer,” Dottie said.
Eleanor smirked. “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
“Knock it off, Eleanor.” Martha gave her a shove. “I don’t know, it’s like the wrong people are getting hurt or killed lately. What the heck is going on?”
“There’s bad luck hitting this village.” The talkative little man from the Cassell development was suddenly at my side. “I’m writing to the paper about that road where Althea Gunn was hit. There’re no streetlights, and there’ve been lots of accidents. Disgraceful. The township should do something.”
“And why didn’t the driver stop?” I wondered. “Perhaps it was someone driving drunk, or someone with a suspended license.”
“Or someone who was up to no good.” The old man winked at us.
A woman who was even shorter than him came up and gripped his arm. “Maybe it was someone who should give up driving because he can’t see properly anymore and refuses to go to the optician to get his eyesight checked?”
“Ah, woman, leave me be.” He struggled against her grasp. “You’re always nagging.” He winked at us again. “I haven’t talked to my wife in three weeks. I didn’t want to interrupt her. Bada-bing!”
She marched him up the steps into the church and they disappeared inside, but we could still hear the sounds of her berating him echo around the hallowed space.
“See, that kind of behavior is why I’m glad I’m still single,” Eleanor said.
“Oh, but I loved being married.” Martha’s eyes filled with tears.
Joe cleared his throat. “I expect the police will look for paint chips from the car at the scene,” he said quickly, with a worried look at Martha. “You know, some of those foreign makes would be a dead giveaway. Glass from headlights can often help, too.” He loved to tinker with old cars, which was a good thing, considering that our Subaru had almost two hundred thousand miles on it.
* * *
After the service, where Eleanor miraculously behaved herself this time, we headed outside again. Perhaps it wasn’t such a miracle, but rather that she was slightly hungover from the amount of wine consumed at Ruth’s.
Suddenly there was a yell behind us, and I watched in horrified slow motion as Grace Vreeland slipped on the top step and came crashing down the whole flight, landing with a thud on the ice at the bottom.
I hurried over to her. “Oh, God, Grace, are you okay?”
Grace moaned. “My ankle. I think it’s broken.”
I reached down to try to help her into a sitting position, but she waved a frantic hand. “Don’t move me. Aargh.”
Martha was already on her cell phone calling 911. Joe ripped off his coat and slid it under Grace to protect her from the cold as much as he could without jostling her.
“The ambulance is on its way,” he said.
She moaned, and I knelt beside her. “I was going to go and look after Althea’s cat today,” she whispered, grimacing in pain. “But I won’t be able to go anywhere for a while. Could you do it for me?”
I eagerly agreed. None of us had ever been inside Althea’s house. “Do you have the keys?”
“No. Strange, isn’t it? Seeing as we are cousins and all. But there you are.”
I gasped. “Wait, you’re Althea’s cousin?”
My face must mirror every thought in my head. In spite of her agony, Grace gave me a wry smile. “It’s family, Daisy. You don’t get to choose. I know Althea’s an odd one, but she’s my only living relative. I’m stuck with her.”
“But how were you going to get in to feed the cat?”
“I was going to ask the police to give me the keys out of her bag at the hospital.” She gritted her teeth against the pain. “I also wanted to pick up some of her personal items to make her feel more comfortable there while she recovers.”
I quickly scrambled for a pen and scrap of paper in my bag and wrote down the list of items Grace dictated to me until we heard the whine of a siren.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”
As the ambulance men loaded poor Grace into the vehicle, I saw the Fowlers slide into a black sports car and speed away.
* * *
I called Serrano and explained what had happened and that I needed to check on Althea’s cat. He agreed to get hold of the keys and said he’d meet me there in an hour.
Althea lived in a Federal-style house that was about two hundred years old. It sat right on Grist Mill Road, just past the church, at the last bend before the intersection with Main Street in Millbury. Again, I wondered why she hadn’t been rooting for the Historical Society to win Glory Farm. Anyone who lived in a house this old must have a real love for architecture and a respect for the past in order to be able to stomach the upkeep. A ladder was propped up against one wall. I’d bet anything that Althea had been cleaning out her gutters and I shuddered at the thought.
Serrano zoomed up a minute later and opened the front door. We walked into a formal parlor that held one armchair with a lace antimacassar over its back. Next to it was a simple gateleg table holding a black leather Bible, but nothing else. Then into a stenciled living room with Prussian blue–painted woodwork and a nonworking fireplace, where everything was also fanatically spare and neat. The only hint at décor was the samplers hanging on every wall.
The bulging horsehair sofa wasn’t exactly made for comfort, but the gigantic orange cat lounging in the middle of it didn’t seem to mind. He purred at the sight of us. A very loud, throbbing purr.
Serrano laughed. “Hey, buddy. You haven’t missed too many meals, have you?”
The cat jumped down from the sofa with a thud and wound his way around our ankles.
I smiled as I bent to scratch his ears. As formidable as Althea was with people, she’d obviously adored and spoiled her pet. The purring increased threefold, and Serrano chuckled again.
“You’re a funny guy.” While he took his turn at petting the friendly feline, I took a peek at the nearest sampler. Even though the verse was old in style, I recognized Althea’s expert needlework and spotted her stitched signature in the bottom right-hand corner.
Give me a house that will never decay
For this is where I lost my way
Confessed not my sins or troubled mind
Instead made haste away
A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still
E’er you remark another’s sin
Bid your own conscience look within
In the House of the Lord this day
Let us build a new foundation
The guilty will see the error of their ways
Bring upon themselves swift destruction
I shook my head. Jeez, Althea. Why was all her work so grim? I wondered what had happened in her life to give her such a dour outlook, until I remembered she’d worked for Cassell for years. That ought to do it for anyone.
Serrano and I wandered into the kitchen, and I fed the cat and put down fresh water. There was a litter box in the powder room that looked relatively clean.
He took out his cell. “I gotta call Animal Control and get this guy picked up a
nd into foster care.”
“Please, can’t you leave him here?” I begged. “I’ll look after him. I could come every day and feed him.”
“Sorry, Daisy, no can do.”
“Look, he’s an old cat,” I said, scrambling for the right words. “It would stress him to no end to take him out of his environment. He’d be much happier here in his own home. You let me take care of Cyril’s cat, didn’t you?”
“That’s different. Besides, I don’t think you’d be able to resist the urge to snoop around this poor woman’s house. Why do you think I met you here, instead of sending one of my officers?”
I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at him.
“We need to make sure he’s safe until the old girl comes out of the hospital.” Serrano brushed some orange fur off his pants. “If she ever does,” he finished darkly. “It’s not looking too good right now.” He jerked his head toward the stairs. “Go get her stuff, and let’s move.”
The master bedroom was barely the largest of the three modestly sized rooms upstairs. In the way of old houses of this period, there were no walk-in closets, only a narrow one-door affair that held a meager handful of clothes. It wasn’t hard to find the robe that Grace had described, and I folded it into the shopping bag I’d brought, wrinkling my nose at the sickly sweet smell of mothballs.
On the bed was an immaculately white matelassé coverlet, and there was another Bible on the bedside table. There was a small fireplace in this bedroom, too, with the same grayish blue–painted trim on the mantel, as well as on the windows and doors.
I wandered over to the opposite wall to admire an antique sampler with a tree of life design and quirky folk art animals. There was even a rooster in the branches of the tree! From the faded condition of the threads, I knew it was genuinely old, not one of Althea’s recent creations.
Son of God thy blessing grant
Still supply my ev’ry want
Tree of Life thy influence shed
With thy sap my spirit feed
Tend’rest branch alas am I
Wither without thee and die
Weak as helpless infancy
O confirm my soul in thee
All my hopes on thee depend
Love me save me to the end
Give me the continuing grace
Take the everlasting praise
Another had a series of names stitched into panels. I remembered Althea saying in class that one very interesting type of nineteenth-century sampler was the family record. The best had pillars on each side, an arch across the top, and were decorated by garlands of flowers.
This must be Althea’s family. I traced the names inscribed with my finger. A little bell rang in the back of my mind, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out.
“Come on, Daisy, let’s go!” came the impatient call from downstairs.
On impulse, I snapped a photo of the sampler with my cell phone and tossed the rest of the requested items to take to the hospital into my bag: Althea’s Bible, some toiletries, and her pillow. I hurried back down the stairs. Grace had asked me to bring an unfinished sampler that was in the living room, too. I thought this might be a bit ambitious seeing as Althea was in a coma, and who knew how long it would be until she could tackle something like this again, but I dutifully packed up the embroidery hoop.
We walked back onto the street, and Serrano locked the front door. I stared up at the bedroom window, that little bell clanging again in the back of my mind.
Suddenly I remembered where I’d seen a sampler like the one in her bedroom. I thrust the bag into Serrano’s arms. “Got to go, Detective. Talk to you later.”
I jumped in my car and tore off, leaving Serrano standing on Grist Mill Road with a bemused expression on his face. I knew exactly where I was headed.
The one-room schoolhouse that served as the Historical Society’s headquarters.
Chapter Fourteen
Now that I was a member, I had my own key, and I opened the door with shaking fingers. Along the left wall sat a row of the original student desks. In the center was a long table where the society held meetings and where we displayed informational brochures for the public. Portraits of some of the founding members of the society lined the opposite wall.
I hurried toward the back of the room where, amid yellowing maps and various black-and-white framed photographs of Millbury from a hundred years ago, a few samplers hung on the wall. I wondered if these were the ones that had come from Glory Farm. Of course I’d noticed them before, but with more of an antiques shop owner’s eye for the overall pleasing quality rather than studying them in detail.
One was a family record, very similar to the one in Althea’s bedroom, but it was much larger in size and more extensive in scope. In some of these small communities, there were only a handful of families who originally owned all the land, and I could clearly see the branch for the Gunn family.
I yanked out my cell phone, opened the photo, and began comparing the names. In the quiet of the room, which at one time must have resounded with children’s laughter and chatter, I went back and forth. From present day back to the past, one by one, until the names suddenly stopped on the society’s sampler.
What the heck? I leaned closer to the sampler on the wall until my nose was about two inches away from it. Upon careful inspection I saw where the top corner was re-darned, and if I wasn’t mistaken, it was with a difficult darning stitch that Althea had shown PJ.
I zoomed the picture on my phone as large as I could go and continued up the tree until I gasped as one name jumped out at me. Otto Gunther. A famous ruthless slave catcher mentioned in Rufus Banks’s diary.
Althea’s ancestor.
I sank onto the tiny wooden seat of one of the desks, my legs weak. I traced the scarred surface with my fingers, my mind in a whirl. The family must have shortened their name from Gunther to Gunn at some point, hoping to erase the past. The sampler in her house was so beautiful that she couldn’t bear to get rid of it, in spite of the damning tale it told.
Okay, think about this carefully, Daisy, before you jump to any conclusions.
Serrano had said that Roos was asking all kinds of questions about the history of Millbury. Was this the story he was working on? If he planned to reveal her shameful family record, I knew now why Althea would have had reason to kill him.
My heart raced faster. She was the one who stole Cassell’s truck that night and picked up the photographer as he walked along Sheepville Pike. Althea would know where the keys to the vehicles were kept from years working as the builder’s secretary. Probably in the construction trailer, and heck, she might even still have a door key. Althea was a tall woman, and she wore a man’s trilby hat. The witness could have easily mistaken her for a male driver in the dark.
Maybe she picked up Roos just to talk to him, to try to convince him to change course, much the same as I’d done with Cassell. But when he refused, she panicked and killed him to keep him from exposing the truth. She tied a spare bell rope around him to drag him up the stairs into the attic.
Not only could old samplers tell tales about the past, but in this case, they provided clues to the present story.
I called Serrano, bursting with my news, but he was in his cold, distracted zone again and said it was merely circumstantial. Besides, he didn’t see how an elderly woman could drag a full-grown man into an attic.
“You should have seen her move that trestle table at church!” I practically yelled. “And she’s a bell ringer. They’re in the process of replacing the ropes at the church with new ones. Serrano, it all fits! I’m convinced Althea is the killer.”
Abruptly he said he had to go and hung up.
However, instead of being irritated, I smiled to myself. Let him run around, wasting his time. I’d sit back and wait for him to see that I was right.
Yet
again.
* * *
Thanksgiving was fast approaching, and I had my hands full readying the house for Sarah and Peter’s arrival, plus the busy days at the store. I’d broken the news to Joe right after the estate sale about our expanded list of dinner guests, hoping he wouldn’t mind, but he was delighted. He suggested inviting Angus and PJ, too, and we’d made it an even ten by inviting Mary Willis, the lovely widow who’d sold me so many wonderful linens. I hated to think of her being alone at the holidays.
Joe had spent every night since then poring over cookbooks and planning his menu.
I called Martha. “Why don’t you stay with us for Thanksgiving? Don’t just come for dinner. Sarah and Peter will be here, and it would be fun. The store will be closed on Friday, and you can hang out for the whole weekend if you want.”
She readily agreed. “I can help Joe with preparing the meal, too. I’ll be done at the soup kitchen by noon, and I’ll head right over.”
I didn’t ask Eleanor to stay, as I knew she would prefer to be in her own bed. Eleanor was a lone wolf who valued her privacy, but Martha hated being by herself.
With Sarah, plans were always fluid until she actually showed up, but she arrived on schedule on Wednesday night, together with her boyfriend, Peter. Eleanor stopped over after work, eager to see my daughter, and we assembled in the kitchen, chatting excitedly about the latest film that had just wrapped in Spain and exclaiming over the gifts Sarah had brought for us. Sarah told Eleanor how she’d refused to go to a bullfight, and Eleanor nodded approvingly. My daughter and Eleanor had worked together on many of the same film sets and they always enjoyed swapping old war stories.
“I’m so happy you’re here for the holidays, darling. You, too, Peter.” I smiled at the dark-haired gorgeous young man at my kitchen table. I’m sure he had his faults, but I’d never seen Sarah so happy, and for that, I adored him.
“Thanks for having me,” he said with a smile. Joe handed him a beer, and the two men clinked bottles.
“Oh, I love Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite!” Sarah exclaimed. “Are you making your special stuffing, Mom?”
