Murders on Elderberry Road: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery

by Sally Goldenbaum

  The scream of a second siren broke into Kate’s thoughts just as she turned onto Elderberry Road. She braked to a stop directly in front of Marla’s Bakery and Café and watched the police car speed by. Its spinning light splashed red shadows across the front of Flowers by Daisy, the Elderberry Bookstore, and on down the block of uneven brick stores until it screeched to a stop — directly in front of Selma Parker’s quilt shop.

  Phoebe Mellon had been up for nearly two hours. Not by choice, lord knows, but neither God nor man could keep Jude and Emma, her eleventh-month-old twins, asleep past 6 o’clock. And then those blasted sirens scared little Emma half to death and Phoebe had her hands full with diapers and nursing and crying babies. Finally she settled them both in the playpen, diapered and happy with dribbles of mother’s milk collecting in the corner of their mouths, and she shook her sleeping husband awake.

  “It’s Saturday, Jimmy dear,” she said sweetly, planting a kiss on his forehead. “And I’m off to my quilting bee.”

  James Burgess Mellon III groaned. He pulled one eye open and watched his bride of not quite two years slip out of her robe and into a pair of jeans and tee shirt. Even in jeans, no make-up, and her hair a floppy mess of white-gold waves, Phoebe excited him. He’d fallen in love with all five feet of her the first night he laid eyes on her. He was standing alone at the bar at Nick’s — a law student hangout — and there she was, bulldozing her way through that mass of inflated egos and legal brawn, a loaded platter of beers hoisted high above her head. And he’d fallen for her hook, line and sinker. They were married the day after his law school graduation, and barely nine months later, Jude and Emma burst into their small world and filled it to the brim.

  “Well?” Phoebe said now, grinning down at him. Sunlight from the bedroom window lit her from behind and her hair frizzed up around her head like a halo. “Better get yourself out of that bed right now or I’ll be tempted to do evil things.”

  “Hmmmmm,” Jim murmured.

  Phoebe pulled the covers up over his head. “Later, love. You need to earn your keep. Our beautiful babes are in the playpen. I’m outta here.”

  Phoebe blew him another kiss, spun around and headed toward the back door of the house that her in-laws had given them for a wedding present. Phoebe knew the Mellons didn’t like her much, and the house was an attempt to disguise the fact that she had been a barmaid and pierced her ears far more than was socially acceptable at the Crestwood Country Club. The fact that she worked in a bar to pay her way through college because her family didn’t have a dime, didn’t seem to alter the Mellons’ opinion. So they tried to make her more to their liking by wrapping her up in a lovely home and a membership to their club. “It’s the ‘My Fair Lady’ approach,” Phoebe explained to the Queen Bees in her best Eliza Dolittle imitation: ‘I’ll be a proper wife in a proper house, I will.’ And then she’d giggled — that Goldie Hawn ripple that soon had them all pushing their quilting squares aside and reaching for tissues to dab the laughter from the corners of their eyes.

  The house was nice, Phoebe admitted, although she still wasn’t used to it — who needed three bathrooms? But the yard would be great for the kids, and Jim seemed to like the place, so she’d moved on in and even tried her best to keep it looking decent.

  Phoebe checked the twins one final time, planting kisses on their sweet-smelling heads. What absolutely wondrous little people they are, she thought. Then she grabbed a jacket off the brass hook in the back hallway and flew out the door, bounding across the street and down the few short blocks to the Elderberry shops.

  For the fourth time in as many days, Maggie Helmers couldn’t get her truck started. A brief trip under the hood with pliers seemed to do the trick. “Soon, dear truck,” she said out loud, patting the hood affectionately, “I may have to put you out to pasture.”

  A glance at her oversized wristwatch convinced her to let the grease smudges remain on her nose and cheeks until she got to Selma’s. She climbed into the pickup and sped off across town toward the Elderberry shops.

  It took fifteen minutes for Maggie to drive from her veterinary clinic at the edge of Crestwood to Elderberry Road. These Saturday mornings at Selma’s were darn near sacred to her — she wouldn’t miss them for anything, even though it didn’t make practical sense to close her veterinary clinic for those three or four prime Saturday hours. Her ex-husband told her she was crazy to forgo that extra revenue, but Maggie had laughed at that. She figured that anyone who had lost thousands of dollars at Kansas City’s gambling boats and then tried to sue them for encouraging the addiction didn’t have much right to judge other people’s sanity.

  Quilting was her therapy, and Maggie savored every single minute of it — from picking the colors and choosing the fabrics, to cutting shapes and pinning it all together in a marvelous, intricate pattern. And she loved the circle of women whose company she shared every Saturday morning. The group was an odd hodgepodge who might not have found each other in ordinary life, but the quilting gathered them together, and they opened their lives to each other. They even shared Maggie’s passion for “fat-lady” art, finding pieces to add to her collection at art fairs and small galleries.

  Maggie had started her art collection for fun — a grand celebration of grande women. But with the help of friends and family, it was growing into an amazing collection that included a Mexican collage of old women praying at the sea, smooth voluptuous soapstone statues, and a lovely carving. The Queen Bees encouraged her, and rejoiced over each new find, and they always knew just what to get her for her birthday.

  Having Kate come back to town was a special bonus in Maggie’s life, too, even better than the collection of beautiful fat-lady art that filled her small home. Though Kate was a half-dozen years younger than she, Maggie had known her all her life. They’d grown up in the same neighborhood, practically sisters, and to have Kate stay on after Meg Simpson passed was a gift Maggie relished.

  Maggie crossed the Emerald River separating the two sides of town, cut through a narrow one-way street that wound through the edge of Canterbury College (an illegal shortcut, but not patrolled on Saturdays), and spun around the corner onto Elderberry Road, her spare tire and toolbox sliding noisily across the flat bed of her truck. Ahead, toward the end of the block, she spotted a crowd of people, an unusual sight at this hour on a Saturday morning. Only Marla’s opened this early, and the street was usually quiet. Not today. Maggie pulled over to the curb, jammed the gearshift into first, set the brake, and jumped out of the cab.

  Canterbury College was small in size and big in reputation. The large stone buildings, complete with ivy-covered walls, were nearly picture perfect — a fact several Hollywood producers had discovered and used to their advantage in filming movies on location in Crestwood. Cheap, picturesque, and full of friendly people everywhere, that was the word that got out.

  Leah Sarandon remembered seeing one of those movies back east and wondering where its lovely location was — Connecticut? New Hampshire? Kansas, of course, would not have entered her mind, yet here she was, all these years later, a tenured Canterbury professor, walking across a movie-set campus that had become a cherished home to her.

  Leah picked up her pace and breathed in the crisp autumn air. Her long denim skirt brushed lightly against her ankles. People thought of Kansas and imagined tornadoes — not autumn days that touched on sheer perfection — with gentle breezes shaking crimson leaves from their branches — or unimaginable spring weeks with a startling profusion of pink and white dogwoods, deep red crabapple trees — tulips and daffodils and pansies spilling from yards and flower boxes. Leah loved the raw energy that the seasons poured into her soul.

  And she loved this Saturday morning quiet, too, the lovely lazy lull that allowed the whole campus to gear up for another week of learning. She had the small campus almost to herself, with just an occasional student or teacher headed toward the library for research or to the commons for coffee and maybe an early study session. She waved at a
student, shifted her tote bag on her shoulder and headed toward the far corner of campus and a large fenced-in home that anchored the school on the west side.

  Canterbury House, it was called, the place where Elliott Canterbury settled his family more than a century ago so he could build a thriving fur trading business along the banks of the Emerald River. (Local lore had it that whoever coined the name Emerald for this muddy river was thinking green for money.) Once done, he decided the town folks needed a college, and so he built them one in his backyard. It was separated from his large three-story home by a wrought iron fence and an iron-tight will that made sure the college could never force family out of Canterbury House, or worse, tear it down. As long as there were Canterburys that wanted to live in the house, the house would be theirs.

  Leah’s dear friend Eleanor was the sole current resident — the eighty-two-year-old great-granddaughter of the college founder. Leah spotted her ahead, her hand resting on a wrought iron fence finial, and quickened her pace.

  “Hurry up, Leah,” Eleanor yelled out. “You’re poking along like an old lady.” She followed up with a strong, soaring laugh that spun on the quiet air. Eleanor was as unpredictable as Kansas weather — and Leah never tired of her. The college students didn’t know what to think of her, and rumors percolated each fall with the new crop of freshmen. Tales of ghosts and spirits seen late at night in Canterbury House windows punctuated cafeteria gossip — and Eleanor loved every minute of it.

  “What’s that racket, Leah?” she asked now, her clear blue eyes looking into the distance.

  “Sounds like sirens to me,” Leah said, picking up Eleanor’s quilting bag and lifting it over her shoulder. “There’s probably a cat stuck up in a tree somewhere.”

  Eleanor laughed again and took Leah’s arm. In her other hand she gripped a carved walking stick that helped her along uneven sidewalks and foot paths. She also used it often in heated conversations. “A little excitement in paradise. But let’s think big, Leah. Perhaps there’s a dastardly deed been done on Elderberry Road. And if so, my dear, I most definitely don’t want to miss out. Onward.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Streak of Lightning

  Kate looked down the street at the small crowd gathering on the corner across from Selma’s shop. She spotted Phoebe immediately, her loose hair wild and lit by sunshine. She was standing on the edge of the crowd, staring at the quilt shop. “Phoebe,” Kate called at the top of her voice and pedaled fast down the street toward her friend.

  “What’s all this?” Phoebe demanded to Kate.

  Kate slid off her bike and propped it against the lamp post. “I don’t know Pheebs. I heard sirens,” she said. “And a police car nearly ran me off the road.”

  The two young women stared across the street, shielding their eyes from the sun and trying to see through the plate glass windows. The crowd began to spill over into the street and in minutes, the others were there — Leah, Eleanor, and Maggie — all hovering around the lamppost like moths. “I tried to park my truck where I always do on Saturdays — in the alley behind the store,” Maggie said. She was slightly out of breath. “But I couldn’t get through — there’s an ambulance back there — right outside Selma’s back door.”

  “Is Selma all right?” Leah asked.

  “I haven’t seen her — they won’t let anyone in,” Phoebe said.

  “Where’s Po?” Kate pushed her sunglasses into her mass of auburn hair and stared across the street. She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest, squeezing back the fear.

  “There she is!” Phoebe pointed across the street. And with great relief, the covey of quilters strained to see through the shop window. Several uniformed men and women scurried back and forth in front of bright bolts of fabric. And there in the center of it all was Selma Parker, a calm solid figure in the middle of the tempest, Po at her side. Eleanor squinted through her thick prescription sunglasses. “They both look fine.”

  “Susan!” Phoebe yelped, anxious to account for each Queen Bee. “Can anyone see her in there? I can’t see with all the police in the way.”

  Susan Miller had been a godsend to Selma, hiring on as assistant manager of the store the year before and allowing Selma to take an occasional day off, here and there. The Queen Bees had promptly adopted her, pulling her into the group to fill a space left by Helga Hansen, who had moved to Omaha. Susan’s artistic eye, her innate sense of color and her flair for pushing a piece of traditional into a patch of extraordinary had urged the Bees on to new and adventurous ways of quilting. They still loved their traditional patchwork projects, but often, under Susan’s guidance, they played with new ideas — transforming photographs into quilt patterns, combining appliqué, patchwork, and needlework into single projects. Susan kept things fresh and exciting.

  “Susan’s okay. I see her, but she looks a little distraught.” Kate pointed to the west side of the store where a slender figure was bent over in a straight back chair, her head in her hands.

  At that moment, Po emerged from the store and scanned the crowd. She spotted the Queen Bees and quickly crossed the street.

  “I have sad news,” she said quietly, before anyone had a chance to speak or to ask her what was going on inside.

  Kate’s heart rose to her throat. Phoebe’s eyes grew larger. Leah stared at her friend. “Out with it, Po,” Eleanor commanded.

  “Owen Hill has died.”

  Kate stared at Po. “What do you mean, died? That’s impossible. I just saw him yesterday afternoon on campus.”

  “Well, he wasn’t dead then, Kate,” Po said. “But he is now.”

  Leah blanched. She had known Owen Hill since coming to Canterbury College as a young professor fifteen years before. He had been a mentor and friend. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “What happened, Po?”

  “We don’t know yet. Heart attack, maybe. It looks like he fell hard and hit his head. They’ve just now taken him away.”

  “When did it happen?” Phoebe stuck her hands into the pockets of her jeans and lifted herself onto the toes of her tennis shoes, straining to see any new developments across the street. “Po, this is so awful! Poor Selma — a man dying in her store.”

  Maggie edged in between Kate and Phoebe. “Is Selma all right, Po?”

  “She’ll be okay,” Po said. “She has her hands full right now. The police answer those emergency calls as well as the ambulance, so there are plenty of folks crawling around inside our quilt store.”

  Leah’s oval face was pale and her clear brown eyes registered distress. “Owen and I were on a committee together this semester. I saw him nearly every day on campus. You don’t think about people like Owen Hill dying.”

  “Why was he at Selma’s?” Eleanor asked.

  Eleanor’s practical question released a stream of others:

  “Is Susan okay?”

  “Where was Mary?”

  “Where did he die?”

  “What can we do?”

  Questions flew like quilting needles, drowning Po’s voice. Finally she shushed the Queen Bees with a fanning of her hands. “I think there actually is something we can do. We can gather our quilting equipment, head to my house, and get to work planning this anniversary quilt for Selma,” she said. “That’s what we can do.”

  The Paltrow home, where Po had lived for over thirty years, was everyone’s favorite place “to stop and flop,” as, Kate put it. The rambling white frame house, surrounded by a sixteen-foot-wide porch, was just a short mile from the Elderberry shops. It was in the heart of a gracious old neighborhood, filled with comfortable homes, giant elm trees and old maples that turned the yards into fiery paintings each fall. Many professors from nearby Canterbury College had raised their families in the closely-knit neighborhood. Po and Sam had raised their own children there, but often said it was the village of which Hillary Clinton spoke — and Sam had joked that it had taken every single one of those villagers to help them raise their three.

  Phoebe, Kate, and Maggie s
queezed together in Maggie’s truck, with Kate’s bike rattling around in the back, and were the first to reach Po’s. Turning into the drive, they cruised past the bordering crabapple hedges and pulled to a stop in front of the three-car garage.

  “I love this house,” Kate murmured, looking up at the battered basketball hoop, the scene of many late-night games of H.O.R.S.E.

  “Me, too,” Maggie said. She tossed her keys into an enormous leather purse and followed Kate and Phoebe around to the back door. “It’s the kind of house that looks at you, opens its arms and says, ‘Hey, you, whoever you are — come on in. Be safe. Be comfortable. Be happy,”

  Kate smiled. Safe. Comfortable. Happy. She had been all of those things in this house. Her mother and Po never went more than a day or two without getting together, and when she was little, Kate was always in tow.

  “I think the first time I ever met you was right here on this lawn,” Kate said to Maggie. “You were with Po’s daughter, Sophie.”

  “And Po told Sophie and me that we had to watch her best friend’s little girl while they talked girl-talk in the sunroom. So there we were, stuck with this scrawny, gangly little kid,” she snorted, “with orders to treat little Katie Simpson like a gentle lamb.”

  “Gentle lamb, my foot,” Kate laughed. “And I was never scrawny, Maggie. You know that.”

  “Oh, shush, you’re gorgeous. Always were. Disgusting but true.”

  “And what did you do, Mags? Ditch her?” Phoebe asked. “That’s what my brothers always did with me.”

  “Nope. Kate was ornery enough that we couldn’t get away with that. But we did send her in to ask for Cokes and cookies because Po spoiled her rotten.”

  Phoebe laughed and Kate pushed open the door. Like many of the neighbors, Po never locked her doors, a fact Kate took for granted growing up. But now, after living in Boston for a few years, it made her cringe.