by Gin Jones
He shrugged. "I have no idea. Brooke wanted Trouble-Free Quilts—that's what she called the shop—to be all hers, so I didn't interfere."
Trouble-Free Quilts. Of course. That had to be what the TFQ referred to in the Monkey Wrench block from when Brooke lived in Kansas. I still didn't know why it was in a block that seemed to refer to her husband's career, but at least now I knew that the quilt shop had definitely been part of Brooke's "Kansas troubles."
Lawrence continued, "Maybe I should have gotten involved. I was kind of distracted at the time, dealing with the transition to a new base and then some special training. And Brooke didn't tell me about the problem until after we moved. I may just be rationalizing my decision, but I always figured there was nothing I could have done about her partner's embezzlement any more than she could have, so maybe it was better that I stayed out of it."
I was going to ask him what he knew about the partner, but right then Lawrence glanced back at the pile of disassembled quilt-display stands that were still stacked high enough that they were threatening to fall over. "I've got to go now, ma'am. But I really do appreciate the invitation to dinner today."
"I'll see you later then." I could question him then about the partner.
"Thanks," he said. "It's nice to know that Brooke had some good friends here in town. She never did make friends easily."
I thought there might have been a hint of a tear in his eye, but he turned away before I could be sure. It could have been wishful thinking on my part, convincing myself that he'd loved his wife. Because otherwise it was possible that I'd just invited a killer to my house for dinner.
* * *
Five minutes later, I'd confirmed that all of the miniature quilts were accounted for and packed into their bin, and Manny had produced a handcart for transporting it the two blocks to the Danger Cove Historical Museum.
Matt appeared in time to ask if I needed any help or if he should go back to my house to prepare for guests. We were still running early, the museum was on the way to where his truck was parked, and it wouldn't take long to hand off the quilts to Gil. She was always highly organized and prepared for unexpected occurrences—even a murder at a museum event hadn't fazed her—so she'd be ready for us as soon as we arrived, and the transfer shouldn't take more than a few minutes.
Since there was time to spare before the turkey-sitter was expecting us to return, I didn't need to ask Matt to go home and keep an eye on things there. His presence always had a calming effect on me. Silly as it was to worry myself sick over something as minor as a holiday meal, I could feel my stomach getting queasy at the prospect. I wasn't at risk of passing out, but I would feel better with Matt beside me. I hadn't had such a large dinner party since before I'd retired from the practice of law, and I didn't know all of the people who were coming today, or didn't know them well, so there was a lot of uncertainty about how well they'd interact with each other. If even family members could practically come to blows over Thanksgiving dinners, I could only imagine what could happen with a group of strangers that might even include a killer.
"I'd love your company on the walk to the museum," I told Matt. "You can be the armed escort."
He raised his arms in a pose meant to show off his muscles. "As long as these are the only kind of arms involved."
"Those are the only arms I want."
Matt gave me a self-satisfied grin before grabbing the handle of the cart with the quilt bin loaded onto it
We'd just reached the edge of the park on the way to Main Street when I heard my name being shouted. I turned around to see Albert Hollister running toward us, waving a several-page document in the air. I thought Fred Fields had convinced him to go home as soon as Cliffside Drive was reopened to traffic, but if so, he'd come back.
Matt parked the handcart and moved in front of me protectively, but Hollister slowed his headlong pace once he realized we weren't trying to run away from him. Matt turned sideways so he was still between me and Hollister, but in a less obviously protective stance.
"I know who you are now," Hollister said. "You aren't just a friend of the guild. You're their hired gun."
"I don't believe in violence," I said. "I'm a quilt appraiser."
He waved the papers dismissively. "I don't mean literally. I mean, you do whatever they tell you to do, run interference with the cops, make sure the quilters' enemies end up in jail. That sort of thing."
I could see where he might have gotten that impression, even if it was incorrect. "I've been able to assist the police in a few instances relating to the guild. I just did what any other person might do if she happened to have some relevant information."
"So do you have any relevant information about Brooke Donnelly's death to give to the police?" Hollister demanded.
"I'm afraid not. All I've been able to do today is enjoy the parade, and now I'm delivering these quilts to the museum so I can go home and finish preparing for Thanksgiving dinner."
He snorted. "That's not all you're doing here. The parade is just a convenient cover story. You've been asking questions about anyone who might have had a grudge against the Donnelly family, trying to figure out who killed her. I bet you even think I might have done it."
"If I were a detective, I'd certainly consider all possibilities," I said. "Nothing personal. You do have a bit of a history with the Donnellys, from what I've heard."
"Ha! I knew it." Hollister shook the papers again. "You're not so smart after all. I couldn't have killed Brooke. I was getting a warning from the police for exercising my rights to free speech when she died. It's right here in the report."
He shoved the sheaf of papers at me, and I accepted them reflexively. They were all crumpled, and they'd been printed on a machine that was running out of toner, but they were still mostly legible, and they looked official. Not that I'd take his word for it without verification. First thing to find out was if they even said what he claimed they did, and if so, I'd go to the police station tomorrow and confirm whether the report was legitimate.
A quick skim revealed that at 3:28 p.m., an officer was dispatched to Donnelly's Garage to deal with a disturbance of the peace. When the officer arrived six minutes later, Hollister was arguing with an employee who wouldn't let him see the owner. The report listed three customers from the waiting room who'd been reluctant witnesses to the event. The disturbance must have been substantial, or perhaps just the latest in a long series of skirmishes, because otherwise I'd have expected the matter to be dropped with just a friendly warning. According to the papers though, Hollister had been issued a citation and told to pay a fine or report to court on a date next month to contest the matter.
If the times listed on the report were accurate, Hollister was right about his alibi. He couldn't have killed Brooke. She'd died at close to four o'clock, and the witnesses to the incident at the repair shop indicated that Hollister had been there the entire time from around three fifteen to when the responding officer arrived a little after three thirty, and then the officer had kept him there until almost four thirty while collecting everyone's statements.
Unless the time of death was off by close to an hour, Hollister hadn't had time to kill her and then get to the garage fifteen minutes away to create his alibi. And Matt and I had been at Brooke's house before Hollister had left the garage, so he couldn't have slipped in to commit the murder later than four o'clock, or we would have seen him.
It was more likely than not that Hollister hadn't killed Brooke, but old habits die hard, and I wasn't prepared to entirely acquit him of suspicion until I'd checked that the report wasn't a forgery.
"May I keep this?" I asked him. "It's very interesting."
"It's more interesting than you think," Hollister said, swiping the report back from me and flipping it over to the last page, one I hadn't read yet. "I got this printout yesterday to show the detective. He probably thinks I'm a suspect too, but you're both wrong. I know who killed Brooke, and the proof is in this report."
"I'
m sure Detective Ohlsen would be open to any leads you might have."
"He hasn't returned any of my messages," Hollister said. "I thought he might listen to you, since everyone knows you helped him out in the past."
"Ohlsen does usually return my calls," I conceded.
"Good." He turned the last page of the report to face me and stabbed his finger at a paragraph at the bottom. "Look here. It says that Lawrence left the garage at three o'clock, claiming there was an emergency at home. He didn't get back to the garage before the cop made me leave. You know what that means, right?"
It meant that Lawrence had lied when he'd told me he'd been at the garage when Brooke was killed. It didn't necessarily mean anything more than that, as Hollister believed, but it did make me wonder if Lawrence's self-recrimination about not being home to protect Brooke from the killer had been an act. "Why don't you tell me what you think it means?"
"It means the oh-so-perfect Lawrence Donnelly killed his wife. That's what it means."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Having said his piece, and apparently convinced that I would support his theory about Brooke's death, Hollister left, and Matt and I continued toward the museum, still with plenty of time to get home before our guests arrived.
When we arrived at Main Street, across from the museum, the roadway was filled with vehicles, bumper to bumper, moving in unpredictable starts and stops. The police must have just reopened downtown to vehicular traffic, creating the logjam that was going to make crossing the street a real challenge.
A uniformed officer had been dispatched to control the traffic, but he was a few blocks away at the intersection with Cliffside Drive, leaving the rest of Main Street dependent on the courtesy—or lack thereof—of drivers anxious to get home to their holiday meals. Unless we detoured all the way up to where the officer was, it was going to be a long wait before we could safely cross the street.
Tricia Sullivan hadn't been part of the deconstruction crew for the float, so she'd made it to the trolley stop in front of attorney Aaron Pohoke's office on Main Street before Matt and I arrived nearby. Apparently the trolley service had been delayed or perhaps overwhelmed by the crowds looking for a lift back to the nearest parking, because there were quite a few people waiting for a ride.
Tricia had stepped to one side to talk with a young teen nervously fidgeting with the skateboard he was holding. He glanced in our direction before saying, "Thanks, Mrs. Sullivan. I'll see you at school next week," and then racing off on his skateboard, weaving through the packed sidewalk and miraculously not knocking anyone over.
Tricia shook her head in apparent bemusement and turned to me. "I never would have thought that Brooke's revelation of my past would turn into a good thing. I've been trying to get Jacob to stop cutting my class from before the semester even started, and now he's promising he'll be there on Monday."
"What happened?" I asked.
"Turns out that the whole school now knows about my sordid past, thanks to Brooke and the grapevine that amplified the story, and apparently it gives me some street cred that I didn't have before." Tricia shook her head in disbelief. "Jacob tells me that he didn't think I had anything I could teach him, and then when he found out about my teenaged indiscretion, he had to admit that maybe I did know what it was like to be his age and do stupid things."
"I can't really picture you doing anything too bad."
Tricia shrugged. "It wasn't really, but I was afraid it would undermine my efforts to be a role model for kids. I hung out with a bad crowd for a while in ninth grade, and I ended up with a juvenile record for violating curfew and possession of a few crumbs of marijuana."
"How did Brooke find out about it?" I wasn't an expert in juvenile law, but I knew the basics. "Your record should have been sealed."
"It was, but I was stupid—again—and told Brooke about it. I thought if I shared something personal, it might break through the barrier she always maintained, and we could become real friends. It didn't work, of course, and it made me a bit anxious that she knew something about me that I preferred to keep private, but I didn't really think she was malicious enough to use it against me. At least not as long as I didn't do anything to alienate her, so I was careful not to give her any reason to be mad at me."
"Why do you think she did it then?"
"I have no idea," Tricia said. "She was obviously under some strain, between Ryan Murchison and then the theft of the quilts by someone she presumably knew, so she felt responsible for losing them. Something must have set her off on Tuesday, and I just wish I knew what it was. Or that I'd been able to convince her to let me help her that day. Maybe she'd have told me what she was so upset about instead of trying to get me into trouble."
I found it interesting that Tricia could be so generous in the face of Brooke's cruel behavior. The regret seemed genuine. Perhaps because the secret that had been revealed wasn't all that big a deal. It wasn't likely to adversely affect Tricia's job or her other friendships, and as young Jacob had just demonstrated, the revelation might actually have some beneficial effects. Which meant that it wasn't much of a motive for murder, at least in hindsight. Tricia might not have been quite so understanding in the immediate aftermath of the confrontation, but I couldn't see her cold-bloodedly plotting to go home, get her husband's hunting gun, and then go to Brooke's house to kill her, especially when the damage was already done. I might have been more inclined to consider Tricia a suspect if the murder had happened earlier, to prevent the secret from being spilled, or even in the heat of the moment, right when she found out what Brooke had done. But the murder had happened some hours later, and while I tried to keep an open mind, I just couldn't believe Tricia was a killer.
"I keep thinking that if I'd looked at Brooke's quilt sooner, I might have recognized it as a cry for help and been able to do something," I said, sharing my own regrets. "But there probably wasn't anything either of us could have done."
"I know you're right," Tricia said. "At least I know it in my head. That doesn't change how I feel, even though I know that Brooke was never much interested in confiding anything personal. She wasn't going to change just because she was more stressed out than usual."
"Apparently she didn't even confide in her husband," I said. "He seems to be as much in the dark as everyone else about whatever had been upsetting her."
"I always got the impression that Brooke was secretly a little afraid of her husband," Tricia said. "At least of his judging her and finding her lacking in some way. She thought he was absolutely perfect, and she desperately wanted to be as good as he was."
"What did Brooke think he'd do if she failed at something?"
"That's the part I'm not sure about," Tricia said hesitantly. "I always thought he was a good guy, but now I wonder if it's just based on Brooke saying he was godlike, rather than on my own observations of him. I really don't know him very well. And no one ever knows what goes on in private, especially with someone as reticent as Brooke was to talk about anything personal. Maybe she just didn't want to disappoint him, and maybe it was more than that. She was so close-lipped about their personal life that for all I knew, he locked her in a closet when she got home from school. Or worse."
* * *
The trolley arrived just then, and Tricia rushed over to climb aboard.
The traffic had remained backed up, so Matt and I were still stuck on the sidewalk unless we wanted to risk being run over. While the cars weren't moving fast, they weren't completely stopped for more than a few seconds at a time either, and everyone was conveniently refusing to notice that we were trying to cross the street. I was starting to wonder if we'd ever be able to get across to the museum or if our dinner guests would be camped out in the front yard when we arrived hours later than expected.
The convertible driven in the parade by Bree Milford was inching toward us, heading toward Cliffside Drive. Cristal was still in the back, waving to pedestrians, who mostly had their heads down, hurrying to get home like I wanted to, not pa
ying any attention to her, but it didn't seem to bother her. Bree had handed over the driving responsibilities to her brother, and she was now in the passenger seat.
Bree waved me over to the side of the car. "Don't look now, but Ryan Murchison is heading in this direction. We rolled past him a few minutes ago, and he's not moving very fast, but I can see him in the side-view mirror. I'm not sure if he's trying to catch up to us to talk to Cristal, or perhaps he's aiming for your friend Matt. I heard Ryan complaining earlier about nosy reporters."
"He could just be on the way back to the sporting goods store." I kept up with the car as it kept slowly rolling along. "You said that's where he lives, right?"
"Yes, but he can still cause trouble on the way," Bree said. "His son went home after the incident before the parade started, and Ryan's obviously been drinking since then. He's been yelling at people and threatening them as he stumbles along. He's mad at everyone in the quilt guild, and that probably includes you. And he had a long rant about reporters and how they all belonged in jail. I haven't seen Duncan Pickles around, so Matt's the only one who might get harassed. We've already called 9-1-1 to dispatch someone to deal with Ryan, but we don't know if they'll be able to get an officer here, with all the traffic."
Bree's car rolled again, passing us. I waved farewell and turned to see where Ryan was and whether he was a threat. He was only about thirty feet away, and it wouldn't take a field sobriety test to confirm that he was seriously drunk. He was unsteady on his feet, bumping into people and bouncing off them like the ball in a pinball game, except in slow motion. I was glad his son had gone home, so he wouldn't have to be embarrassed by his father's bad behavior.
Ryan bounced off a middle-aged man and came to a complete stop about three feet away from me. "I know what you're doing. You're trying to pin Brooke's murder on me to protect your quilting friends."
