by Gin Jones
"Go on." Ohlsen leaned back in his chair, which had some give to it, so it didn't tip onto its back legs, as usually happened with him. He clasped his hands together on top of his head and closed his eyes as if he were taking a nap. Based on past experience, I knew it was something of an act and he was fully alert, concentrating on the case at hand.
Matt shook himself and turned back at the detective. "There's not much more to tell. My medical training doesn't stretch to establishing a cause of death or pinpointing the time it happened. All I really took in was the massive trauma and blood loss she'd experienced. Plus I noticed that there was a gun on the floor, beneath her right hand, as if it had fallen out of her grip."
That caught Ohlsen's attention. He opened his eyes and sat forward abruptly. "If you think it was suicide, you can forget that right now. I don't want to see anything in the Cove Chronicles that even implies the injuries were self-inflicted. This was murder, pure and simple."
Matt frowned at the detective. "How can you be so sure?"
"Years of experience. People always get things wrong when they try to stage a suicide, and this person didn't even do a very good job of it." Ohlsen held up a warning hand. "But that's not for public consumption, you understand, and I can't say more than that. It's better that criminals don't know how to do a better job of committing their crimes."
"I understand," Matt said. "Do you think the killer got in through the broken window?"
"That's going to take some time to figure out. For now, I need to know if either of you have any idea who might have wanted Brooke Donnelly dead." Ohlsen looked first to Matt, who shook his head, and then at me.
"I only met her yesterday," I said, irrationally defensive about how ignorant and helpless I felt in the situation. "There is something you should know though. The quilts we were here to pick up—they were stolen yesterday, and Brooke said she knew who had done it and that she could get them back for the guild."
"You think whoever stole them killed her?" Ohlsen's voice was less skeptical than it had been the first time I'd suggested that someone might have committed murder over a quilt. He'd learned the hard way that the quilt world wasn't quite as soft and fluffy as he'd expected.
"I don't know. I'm just throwing it out as a possibility simply because of the timing. I don't believe in coincidences, and I doubt you do either. On the other hand, the quilts weren't worth much in financial terms, and as far as I know, no one had any major sentimental attachment to them, or they wouldn't have let the guild borrow them for the parade. But depending on when she died, the timing could be suspicious. I'm assuming she was in school today until three o'clock or so, and then she was supposed to have retrieved the quilts for us to pick up by four o'clock today, and she was dead when we arrived at four thirty. There wasn't much time in there for the killer to act. Unless he came to her house to return the quilts."
"Hmm." Ohlsen leaned back and closed his eyes again.
I waited for what felt like five minutes—I'd seen the way he could get lost in his thoughts before—and then finally couldn't stand the silence any longer. "Speaking of the stolen quilts, I wonder if either of you saw them when you went inside. I know it's a minor thing compared to Brooke's death, but the guild needs them for the parade on Thursday."
Matt finally spoke again, his voice strained and sounding as if he were forcing the words out with an effort of will. "They were in a storage bin with a lid when they were stolen, and I did see that kind of container near the front door. I can't say for sure that it's the same one. For obvious reasons, I didn't stop to open it up and look inside."
My relief that the quilts had most likely been retrieved and were safe from blood spatter was quickly supplanted with guilt. I was getting as bad as Dee, worrying about replaceable, inanimate objects when a human being had just died a violent death.
Without opening his eyes, Ohlsen said, "I'll have someone check."
"And then can we take them back to the guild for the parade?" I asked.
Ohlsen sighed and gave up his impression of a napper. "Not today, but give the forensics team a chance to look through them and document them tonight, and then you can have them tomorrow. Provided, of course, that I don't decide in the meantime that they're relevant to the murder investigation."
Before I could worry about how I'd fit that into my schedule, between meeting with Gil Torres at the museum and doing the day-ahead cooking for Thanksgiving dinner, Matt said, "Keely's going to be busy tomorrow, but if you'll let me know when they've been cleared, I'll swing by to pick them up."
Ohlsen let us leave a few minutes later, and Matt remained a subdued version of himself, without the enthusiasm he usually showed for everything he did. He walked me to my front door and made sure I was safely home, but he didn't come inside. He hadn't even seemed tempted by the prospect of spending the evening with me in the vault-turned-reading-room.
Brooke had clearly been the most serious victim, but she wasn't the only one who'd been hurt by what had happened today. Matt had been traumatized by what he'd seen. I couldn't bring Brooke back to life, but there had to be something I could do to help Matt. I wasn't sure exactly what he needed, but making sure that Brooke's killer was brought to justice might be a start.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Danger Cove Historical Museum was a massive two-story brick building that was itself of historical interest, having been built in 1898. It was located on Main Street, an easy walking distance from my house and conveniently right across from a trolley stop for the days when I needed to do some errands before or after visiting the museum.
I didn't have any other major errands today, which was fortunate because the weather was brisk and windy. Especially strong gusts had threatened to grab the bag containing Brooke's quilt out of my hand several times on the way to the museum. I hoped the weather would be nicer for the Thanksgiving parade, or it could cause some problems for both the floats and the spectators.
I hurried into the museum's lobby, out of the chilly wind, and waved in the direction of the ticket taker, only belatedly realizing it wasn't Liz, the white-haired ninety-year-old who seemed to work—or at least sit at the ticket desk reading a book—every single hour the place was open. Liz knew me and would only look up from her ereader long enough to tell me that I was expected and I should go on up to the second-floor office. Liz had been replaced, at least for the moment, with her polar opposite, a heavyset young man, possibly still in high school, who stared forlornly out the front windows like a kid who'd been grounded and couldn't stop torturing himself by watching the fun that his friends were having outside. He didn't seem to have noticed me, so I just kept going toward the stairs and up to the second floor.
Gil—short for Gillian, but pronounced with a hard G—Torres was a stunningly beautiful black woman close to six feet tall. I always envied her ability to look professional without being boring. Today she wore a black wool jacket flecked with the oranges and greens of fall, solid black pants, and a rust-colored silk blouse that made her skin seem to glow. She waited for me in the open doorway of her office suite to the right of the stairwell, softly singing the traditional Thanksgiving song about going to Grandmother's house.
She broke off mid-verse and pointed at the bag I was carrying. "Oooh. What did you bring me?"
"I'm not entirely sure." I dropped the bag on one of the suite's waiting room chairs that were upholstered with the museum's signature textile, a traditional paisley in red, white, and blue, reproduced from an antique quilt in its collection.
As soon as Matt had delivered me back to my home after Ohlsen had finished interrogating us, I'd opened the box that Brooke's husband had given me. It contained an unusual bed-sized quilt made almost entirely of black and gray prints with only the occasional deep burgundy accent. I'd shaken out the quilt, hoping for a note that would explain why Brooke had wanted me to have it, and I'd even checked to make sure nothing had been written anywhere on the box itself, but I found nothing to explain it. The label on the
back of the quilt contained only the very basics for establishing provenance: the maker's name, the town where it had been made, and the year it was completed.
A closer look at the quilt hadn't given me any insights into why Brooke had given it to me. It was a sampler quilt, using a variety of different designs. There were thirty-six blocks laid out in six rows of six. For some quilters, a sampler was, as its name suggested, a chance to sample or experiment with a variety of blocks, and the choice of the blocks was fairly random. For others, the blocks were chosen more deliberately, oftentimes intended to tell a story about either the maker or the recipient.
I suspected that Brooke's quilt fell in the latter category, telling a story about its maker. Most of the blocks were fairly basic in terms of sewing, not the sort that would be chosen for the novelty of them or to learn a new piecing technique. The blocks mostly served as simple backgrounds for what was truly amazing about the quilt—the lavish embellishments with embroidery, beading, and ruching. Brooke had to have known just how special the quilt was—I didn't need all my training as a certified appraiser to know that both the unique design and the exquisite workmanship qualified the quilt as a masterpiece, the culmination of decades spent developing the maker's skills—so why would she have given it to someone she barely knew unless she was trying to tell me something?
Or maybe I just wanted to believe that Brooke had been trying to communicate something with her design. If I was right, then there was a chance that I could decipher the meaning behind the blocks, which might tell me why she'd given the quilt to me. It was a long shot, but maybe, just maybe I could discover in the quilt a clue to her death that would let her rest in peace and that would also give Matt some comfort.
"It's kind of morbid, don't you think?" Gil had joined me in the waiting area and unbagged the quilt to drape it over a row of three chairs. She took several steps back to get a wider perspective on it. "Not just the Goth palette with splashes of blood red, but also the coffin block at the bottom."
I looked at the block she indicated. Some quilts could be laid out in any direction, without an obvious top or bottom, but Brooke's contained blocks that were designed to have a distinct up and down, making it obvious which end of the quilt was intended to be at the top of the bed and which at the bottom. The most notable examples were two versions of a traditional block known as Little Red Schoolhouse—except of course they were Little Black Schoolhouses—that, as the name suggested, looked like a child's simple drawing of a house with a door, two windows, and two chimneys.
At the right end of the bottom row was an admittedly morbid block. It reminded me of the center block of a famous quilt from 1843 known as the Graveyard Quilt because of its depiction of a fenced-in area that contained several appliquéd coffins. Brooke's quilt contained only one coffin in the center, embroidered with her own initials. There was no fencing around it, but in each of the four corners of the block, she'd embroidered a gun almost as big as the coffin. The guns were amazingly detailed, but I didn't know enough about weapons to identify them. Still, it didn't take any firearms expertise to see that they were all aiming in the direction of Brooke's coffin. And it didn't take an obsession with conspiracies to note that Brooke had indeed been shot to death.
I couldn't explain how she could have predicted her own murder when she'd made the final block weeks or even months before it happened, and Gil would probably think I was crazy if I suggested it, so I simply said, "The quilt was made by Brooke Donnelly."
"The woman who was shot?"
I nodded. "I was hoping you'd be interested in adding it to the collection of locally made quilts. Assuming her husband doesn't want it back."
Gil looked pointedly at the coffin. "I'm guessing he's not going to want a constant reminder of her premature death. Unless he's the one who killed her, of course."
"If he did, I'm sure Bud Ohlsen will make sure he ends up in jail, where he won't be able to keep the quilt," I said. "No matter what, I need to find someone who will appreciate it. I'll even do a thorough appraisal for the museum's records if you want it. No charge. It's the least I can do since Brooke entrusted the quilt to me."
"Why'd she give it to you?" Gil asked.
"I'm not entirely sure," I said. "Brooke's husband delivered it, saying she'd insisted I was the only person who'd understand it. I thought at the time that she might have been one of those deluded wannabe artists who can't get into a juried show, so they decide that their designs are just too advanced for most people to see the brilliance of, and she wanted me to confirm her beliefs. But now I'm wondering if she was trying to tell me that there was a message in the quilt, one that only someone with extensive knowledge of quilt history could decipher. But if that's the case, I'm just not seeing it."
"It might be easier to decipher if you knew something about Brooke's life story," Gil said. "Since the coffin block is the last one on the bottom row, reading left to right, and it represents her death, then presumably the first one in the top row would have something to do with Brooke's birth. That ought to be fairly easy to test if you talk to someone who knew her well."
"Her husband said they'd been married for forty years, but he's not going to be in any condition to have some nosy stranger asking him questions about Brooke," I said. "I met a friend of hers yesterday, Tricia Sullivan, but they seemed to be really close, so she'll probably be too distraught to talk to me too. I don't know who else could give me her life story."
"What about Dee and Emma?" Gil asked. "They usually know a good bit about the guild members. Dee might be more narrowly focused on Brooke's quiltmaking history, but Emma usually knows the more personal stuff, like where a person came from and where they went to school, the sorts of things that might go into a memoir. I'd expect the same information to show up in an autobiographical quilt."
Gil could be goofy, like when she sang "Good Night, Irene" over the PA system at closing time, and she was incredibly empathetic with everyone she worked with, so I tended to think of her as a highly emotional person, compared to my no-nonsense trial-lawyer personality. But then she'd say something that reminded me she'd earned a business degree that had honed her natural tendencies toward strategic planning. I was being the emotional one at the moment, unable to see the obvious solution while I was mired in my feelings of guilt.
If I looked at it rationally though, all I had to do was match up the various blocks in the quilt with whatever I could find out about Brooke's life. Not that it would be easy. A few blocks had only one name, like Card Trick, which was a fairly recent addition to the quilting repertoire. That wasn't the whole answer, though, since I also needed to figure out what meaning it held for Brooke. Was she a card player? Or did it refer to the "trick" part of the name? Then, for the remaining blocks, most of which were old, traditional ones, it became even more complicated to decipher Brooke's meaning. Most of them had been given multiple names over the years, so for each block, there would be several possibilities, not just one to figure out what meaning Brooke might have attributed to it. Get the name wrong, and I'd get her life story wrong.
The Schoolhouse block seemed obvious, although it had several other names, like House, Cabin, Honeymoon Cottage, or, oddly, Tippecanoe. Given Brooke's work as a teacher, I had to believe she'd been using that particular block to refer to her career. To decipher the rest of the quilt though, I'd have to try to get inside Brooke's mind and figure out the connections she might have made between her life and the various names for each of the blocks. That work would be less like a relatively straightforward, word-for-word translation from a foreign language and more like the completion of a crossword puzzle where some of the clues were plays on words rather than literal definitions. In fact, it would probably be a good idea to start like I would with a crossword puzzle, filling in the meaning of the blocks that were obvious, like the Schoolhouse, and hoping that they'd help to make sense of the more obscure sections. It was worth a try if it would put my mind and Matt's to rest about Brooke's death.
/> "I'm going to see Dee and Emma on Thursday for the parade, and then they're coming over to my place for dinner, so I can grill them then about Brooke's life."
"You're hosting Thanksgiving this year?" Gil asked. "I thought you usually spent it in Seattle with your family."
"I do, but I thought it was time to see what a Danger Cove Thanksgiving was like. Matt's been raving about the parade and how much he enjoys reporting on it, so I offered to host dinner."
"It is a good parade," Gil said. "I've been to it every year since I moved to Danger Cove, although I was planning to skip it this year to visit some family. Apparently the universe doesn't want me to miss the parade though, because my mother called this morning to say she caught the flu from my nieces and nephews, and everyone's decided it's best to not spread the germs around. We're going to get together on Sunday instead, when people feel better. And aren't contagious. I'm still trying to figure out what to do about dinner tomorrow. My boyfriend said he'd come over to my place if there's no emergency at the hospital. I don't think you've met him yet. He's an anesthesiologist, and he's on call tomorrow, so he said I shouldn't plan anything fancy since he might have to cancel at the last minute."
"You two could join us if you want," I said after only the briefest of hesitations that I hoped Gil hadn't noticed. The table was big enough, and we certainly had enough side dishes to fill everyone's plate, but with the turkey divided eight ways, there was only going to be enough for each person to have an ounce or two of meat. I guess I'd find out if it was true what everyone said—that the side dishes and the desserts were the most important foods for Thanksgiving dinner.
Gil sang the beginning of The Golden Girls theme song, "Thank You for Being a Friend," and then stopped to ask, "Are you sure it's not an imposition? I'd bring some food to share, but considering my cooking skills, you'd probably prefer that I stop by Some Enchanted Florist to pick up a centerpiece."
