Quilter's Knot

by Arlene Sachitano

  "You're an attorney?” Harriet asked, her amazement clear in her voice.

  "Yeah, well, we all have our tawdry little secrets. I haven't really practiced since before my first baby was born, but I've kept my license and stayed current on law, just in case...” She looked at Lauren. “...my friends need something.” She looked at the black plastic sports watch on her wrist. “It's quarter to ten. If we hustle, we can get back to class before coffee break is over."

  "Actually, if you don't mind, could you drop me off on Eighth Street?"

  * * * *

  Robin pulled to the curb but put her hand on Harriet's arm, stopping her from getting out. She looked at Lauren while she spoke.

  "Both of you listen carefully. I only want to say this once.” This new Robin was nothing like her carefree, yoga-teaching alter ego, but Harriet found her strangely fascinating. “Number one, this is not over. Until they have someone convicted and on their way to prison, it will not be over. Number two, because of number one, keep your mouth shut. Don't complain about anyone or anything. Lauren, I know that means a major personality transplant, but you have no choice. This is a small town. If they can't find the real person who killed Selestina, they could very well make you the scapegoat. People have gone to prison based on less evidence.” She looked at Harriet. “And number three, leave this to the professionals. No snooping, no sneaking around, no confronting people. Nothing. This is strictly a defensive game. Let the police catch the killer.” She looked at Lauren again. “And let your legal counsel protect you. Understood?"

  Lauren grumbled a yes, and Harriet nodded as she opened the car door.

  "Okay, I'm going back to class. Call if you want me to pick you up at lunch break."

  Robin pulled away from the curb and out into traffic. Since traffic in Angel Harbor consisted of one car and a mail truck, Harriet waited until the car had disappeared down the block before she walked the rest of the way to Helen's House. There was no real reason for her to conceal her destination, but after Robin's warning, she was feeling paranoid.

  "Hey,” Aiden said, opening the door before Harriet could knock. He pulled her into a crushing embrace. “I cried myself to sleep last night, I missed you so much."

  She pushed him away, but not until his hug softened and he'd kissed her. “You're a liar,” she said. “I happen to know Helen planned on waking you every two hours all night just to be sure you were okay. She told me before I left last night."

  "She was a regular Florence Nightingale.” Aiden stretched his left arm in a circle, his right hand on his left shoulder. “My head hurt so much last night, I didn't even notice my shoulder."

  "Let me see.” She pulled the sleeve of his T-shirt up. “You have a nasty bruise at the top of it. It probably hit the window when your truck rolled."

  "A lesser person would be in the hospital, but I think I'll make it. Did you have a chance to check out that thing I asked you about?"

  "If you mean the Explorer—"

  He put his hand over her mouth.

  "Don't say it,” he said. “Until we know what's going on, we have to be careful. Don't use names."

  "Oookay. I checked out that ... thing ... and I did find ... something, but I'm not sure it tells us much.” She didn't plan on mentioning Tom's name until she knew more. The last thing she needed was a wounded Aiden confronting a Tom who had not only run him off the road but quite possibly was a murderer.

  "By the way,” Aiden said, and grabbed her hand, pulling her to him again. “Why is it that when my mother was killed I was the number-one suspect on everybody's list, but this woman's son you go to the pottery show and dinner with?"

  Harriet coughed to conceal the small gasp that had escaped her lips. Had he read her mind?

  "If you'll recall,” she said, “I went to dinner with Tom before his mother died. And furthermore, if you remember, I went to dinner with you, buddy boy—and more than once—while you were a suspect."

  "Well, I don't like the idea of you dating a potential axe murderer.” He put his finger under her chin and turned her face to his. “I'm not kidding. Until we know what's going on here, you need to be careful. I can't keep my eye on you all the time, so you need to be cautious. Stay away from Tom Bainbridge and all the other crazies at that school. Stick with Mavis and the Threads."

  "Hey, Aiden, you ready to go?” said a slender sandy-haired man dressed in khakis and a blue Angel Harbor Spay and Neuter Clinic T-shirt. He had entered the hall from the staircase, pulling on a navy-blue fleece jacket as he came.

  Aiden turned to Harriet. “Jim and I are going to the hospital to check on Cammi and see if we can do anything for Dr. Johnson.” He turned back to the other man. “Hang on while I get my coat."

  "I'm Jim Park,” the sandy-haired man said, extending his hand.

  "Harriet Truman,” she said, meeting it with her own. His hand was warm and his grip firm but not unpleasantly so.

  "That must have been tough growing up,” he said. “Are your parents politicians?"

  "No, we're relatives. To the former president,” she added.

  She hated having to explain her parent's naming choice. Her parents were international scientists, currently residing in the Far East, if the latest news magazines were accurate. She'd spent her youth bouncing between boarding schools across Europe and Aunt Beth's house in Foggy Point. Her dad had explained to her when she was six that her name was intended to inspire her to greatness.

  "Aiden was really lucky,” Jim said, interrupting her journey through self pity. “Or maybe I should say Cammi was unlucky. That was a big rock outcrop the truck hit as it rolled down the embankment. It was her bad luck the passenger side was down when they hit bedrock. If they'd made it a few more yards down the road before they skidded off, they would have missed the outcrop completely."

  "Do you really think he could have slid off the road? It was raining pretty hard yesterday."

  "I doubt it. It wasn't that wet at the time. Besides, Aiden told the police someone had sideswiped him. I drove over to the hospital when I heard about the accident, and they were questioning him. When Aiden pushed them, they did say there wasn't anything that would contradict his version of the event. They just didn't think it was the kind of thing that would occur in daylight on a relatively busy road.” He shook his head. “It's just hard to say, one way or the other. The police are right that people often don't remember events clearly that happened right before they hit their heads. We'll probably never know."

  I know, Harriet thought. And Tom's car had the scrape to prove it.

  Aiden came back downstairs, and the two men left. They offered her a ride back to the Folk Art Center, but she declined. She needed to think. Maybe the walk back would help her clear her head. Thankfully, it wasn't raining.

  Eighth Street was paved, but Helen's block was the last one with sidewalks. Harriet had to focus her attention on her feet as she walked along the gravel road edge until she reached a pedestrian path that skirted the woods on her right and was a safe thirty feet from the traffic on her left. She picked up her pace, going over the events of the last few days in her mind as she went.

  She started with Lauren's situation, trying to list what she knew for sure. She realized quickly that if she questioned everything Lauren had said all she knew for sure was that Lauren's quilt was no longer on display and Lauren had been questioned about the death of Selestina Bainbridge, her advisor and the owner of the Angel Harbor Folk Art School. She had also learned that Lauren's brother was a janitor at the school, and she had seen Lauren going into her brother's apartment building at night. Her brother had been carrying an armload of papers, which may have come from Selestina's office. Harriet wasn't sure if the search of her own room was related or not. She hoped it hadn't been Lauren, but she couldn't be sure.

  If she included information she thought was true, she could add the fact that Selestina seemed to have made a quilt that was a copy of Lauren's and then hung that quilt at a show in England.

&
nbsp; With regard to facts related to Selestina, Harriet knew the woman was dead; everything else was speculation. It appeared Selestina's son was preparing to sell at least part of the Angel Harbor Folk Art School property. What Harriet didn't know is if he was doing that for Selestina or in spite of her. As for enemies, it seemed that to know Selestina was to hate her; the field was wide open. DeAnn had publicly stood up to Selestina, and Carla had cowered under her wrath, and that was just among the Loose Threads. Most of the students Harriet had spoken to during coffee breaks and meals had similar stories about Selestina.

  Added to the list of unknowns was Aiden's accident. He clearly believed one of the black Ford Explorers from the school had run him off the road. The damage to the vehicle that sported the “TomTom” vanity plate seemed to support his theory, but why would Tom want to harm Aiden? Could Cammi have been the intended target? Tom hadn't seemed to recognize Cammi at the pottery exhibition. It made no sense.

  She looked up, and was surprised to realize she was nearing the drive to the school. She looked at her watch. Good, it was lunch-time.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter Eighteen

  The driveway that led into the heart of the Angel Harbor Folk Art School was carved through a stand of tall old-growth timber. The tree trunks were dark and bare, and the gravel on the road bed was barely discernible under the fallen needles, bark and fern leaves. The scent of Douglas fir and pine was released with every step Harriet took, but she was too distracted to notice.

  She needed to talk to the Loose Threads and see if there were any new developments, and then she needed to talk to Lauren's brother. During her walk home, she had realized the only common factor among all the facts she knew was the school. Lauren was a student, Selestina and Tom the owner and her son and Aiden believed he'd been run off the road by an AHFAS vehicle.

  Harriet's years at boarding school had taught her that if you want to know what's happening in any organization, ask the janitor. They were typically invisible, and yet they had access to everything. She was anxious to find out what Lauren's brother knew.

  But first, she needed lunch.

  The Loose Threads were seated together at the fiber arts table.

  "How's Aiden?” Connie asked. She scooted to her left to make a place for Harriet.

  "He's a little banged up, but mostly he's concerned for Cammi Johnson. He's at the hospital checking up on her now."

  "Robin told us what happened at the police station,” Mavis said. “Do you have anything to add?"

  "Not really,” she said, looking at Robin for direction. Robin didn't say anything, so she continued. “It doesn't seem like they have anything but gossip against Lauren. What did everyone do in class this morning?” she asked, changing the subject again.

  Everyone in turn told what they'd worked on. Sarah and Robin had attended another class in fusibles, learning the technique of tracing their applique image onto paper-lined fusible material then using a sharp pair of scissors to cut the center of the image away leaving a narrow donut of iron-on material. This technique let you avoid the stiff image that most people associated with fusible applique.

  Connie had spent the first half of the day covering postcard-sized pieces of foundation material with a variety of machine generated stitch patterns, until all you could see was thread. She had used her usual oranges, reds and yellows. Lauren's half-finished card was predominately purple and brown.

  Mavis was still up to her elbows in dye, and Carla was using the half-square rectangle technique she and Harriet had learned to construct star blocks.

  Lauren's brother brought out a tray laden with steaming bowls of soup. Today's selection was potato leek, served with dark slabs of Russian rye bread. The group was quiet as they ate their soup and then the fruit cups that followed. Harriet lingered with Mavis as the rest of the group went to either the Tree House or back to their classrooms.

  "I've been going over this in my mind,” she said.

  "And?” Mavis prompted.

  "And ... none of it makes sense. There is a major piece missing somewhere. I just can't make anything add up to Lauren being the center of things. I get closer when I look at Selestina's son Tom. He seems to be preparing to sell the property. And his car seems to have run Aiden off the road. I can imagine Selestina wouldn't want her property sold out from under her, but we don't know if that's the case. How Aiden ties in is still a mystery."

  "Maybe Aiden doesn't fit in. He wasn't in his own vehicle. Who should have been driving that vehicle?"

  "Good point, I'll add it to the list."

  "I'm going to get out of here so you can get busy getting some of that information.” She stood up. “Let me know what you find out."

  She left, and Harriet picked up their bowls and headed for the kitchen.

  "Is Les around?” she asked the cook. The woman was bent over a deep sink, rinsing dishes with a stainless steel goose-necked sprayer then loading them into a rack.

  "He's out at the compost pile. Through that door, down the stairs and follow the path—you can't miss it,” she said without turning around.

  Harriet followed the path and found Les emptying the second of two metal buckets onto the compost heap. A wooden fork was propped up against the end of the chicken wire fence that enclosed three sides of the smoldering organic material.

  "Les?” she called. “Do you have a minute?"

  He took a long look at her before he spoke. “Yeah, sure. I guess. If it will help you fix things for Lauren.” He said it in a flat voice. Harriet found his enthusiasm underwhelming.

  "The other night I saw you with an armload of files. Did they come from Selestina's office?"

  He looked at her.

  "So what if they did?"

  "Hey, relax. I'm on your team."

  "I doubt that."

  "What did you find in the files?"

  "A big bunch of nothing. It was shipping records. Angel Harbor has an arrangement with a couple of Folk Art Schools back east. They all give the same certification for their programs, and to be sure they stay calibrated they ship samples of student work to each other and they all evaluate it and see if they all come up with the same assessment.

  "There were a couple of slips for shipments to England, but the descriptions weren't detailed enough to know what quilts they were talking about. And there was nothing that told why they were going. Other than that, there was a file of staff insurance forms. I tried to tell Lauren Selestina didn't keep much in that office."

  "As janitor you can go into all the offices, right?"

  "I have access to the whole school. Mostly, I work in the fiber arts building and its outbuildings."

  "What about Tom Bainbridge's office?"

  "Yeah, his office is in the ceramic arts building. I work there when we wax the floors or when Brett is on vacation."

  "What can you tell me about him?"

  "What do you want to know?"

  Harriet wanted to smack him. If she were a detective, she'd have been the worst kind. She could see you had to be blessed with a lot of patience, something she didn't possess.

  She took a deep breath. “The first day we were here, I saw Tom with some guys who looked like they were surveying the meadow. Is he selling some of the property?"

  "I don't know if he's really planning on trying to sell it out from under his mother, but he's been talking to a couple of realtors.” He paused. “I guess things are probably different now."

  "Is it possible he was just getting the property valued for tax purposes?"

  Les set his bucket at his feet and looked her in the eye. “Anything's possible."

  "Tell me about the vehicles here. Who has access to the Ford Explorers?"

  "Senior staff, Tom. Selestina, of course, although she didn't really drive much. Nancy in the office."

  "Did they have assigned vehicles?"

  "Not exactly assigned, but people had their favorites."

  "But could anyone drive any of the cars? W
ere the keys kept in a public place?"

  "They didn't need to bother. All the keys are the same. You got one, you've got them all."

  Harriet clenched her fists at her side. “You must know something that can help me prove your sister didn't kill Selestina,” she said. “Come on, throw me a bone."

  Les rubbed the fine blond stubble on his chin as he thought.

  "I don't know about the murder, but if you're trying to find her missing quilt, I'd check Tom's office and the workshop. He's the one that actually boxes and mails the stuff back and forth."

  "Is the workshop in the center of the fiber arts building?"

  "No, anyone can get into those rooms. There are some utility buildings in the woods, sort of hidden at the back of the property on the far side of the meadow. I think they were the original barn and outbuildings before they built the school. Selestina has her personal studio there. And Tom does the packing there."

  "So, what am I going to find?"

  Les spread his hands wide. “I don't know,” he said and when Harriet didn't say anything, he continued, “Really. It's the one place I don't have a key for. Selestina wanted her privacy when she was working on her own stuff. It's strictly off-limits."

  "Are you sure you don't know anything else?"

  "Look, don't you think if I had overheard someone talking about killing Selestina or even about setting Lauren up or stealing her work—don't you think I'd say something?"

  "I suppose so. Thanks, anyway. And if you think of anything, let me know."

  "You'll be the first,” he said in a tone that told Harriet the opposite would be the truth.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter Nineteen

  Harriet went back to the Tree House and picked up her bag of tools and fabric. It was hard to think about her half-rectangle project when thoughts of Tom's office kept creeping into her mind.

  None of the Loose Threads was in the Tree House, so she went into the kitchenette and helped herself to three chocolate chip cookies; Darcy had picked them up the day before at a little bakery when she was in town. Harriet knew none of the Threads would begrudge her the dose of chocolate, but she also knew Aunt Beth would grill them about her cookie consumption and none of them would stand up well to the pressure. She wiped her face and hands with a damp paper towel to insure she wasn't wearing any evidence and set off for the fiber arts pavilion.