by Gin Jones
The pieces all started to fall together. Her partner in the quilt shop had been a fellow teacher. I'd assumed the teacher was female, but Lawrence had never said the person's name or referred to a gender that I could recall. He always just referred to "Brooke's friend." He might not have even met the partner since he'd been respecting Brooke's desire for the shop to be hers alone. If that partner was Manny, it would tie everything in her quilt together. The troubles in Kansas, then the worm in her apple when Manny arrived in Danger Cove, and the two sets of blocks that, together, spelled out his full name.
"I think I know who killed Brooke Donnelly." It was still just circumstantial, and I could be wrong, but Detective Ohlsen needed to hear my theory, and I needed to tell him about it in person. It would be too easy for him to ignore a text or refuse to accept a phone call, and in any event I couldn't do the explanation justice in words alone. I had to show him the pictures of Brooke's quilt and explain about how it mirrored her life and death.
Fred Fields had said the detective would be at the station all day today, so I'd have to go there to convince him to at least look into whether Brooke and Manny had worked together in Kansas. That should be easy enough for someone with his resources to research, and if Brooke and Manny had known each other back then, it ought to be enough to convince Ohlsen to dig deeper into my theory.
"I need to go to the police station. I may be a little late for dinner, but Matt will be there, and he can let everyone inside."
"But who killed Brooke?"
It would take too long to explain, and I had to get to the police station as soon as possible so I could finish there and get home to my houseguests. Besides, if it turned out that I'd gotten it wrong, it would be better if no one knew I'd suspected Manny. Once the rumor started, it might never get quashed again, and some people might think he was guilty if no one else was ever arrested or convicted.
"I'll tell you later," I promised and then rushed for the exit.
Just inside the main door, I paused to call Matt to let him know I might be late, depending on how long it took me to convince Ohlsen to take my theory seriously. The call went to voicemail, so I left a message to say I was on the way to the police station and Gil could explain why I'd been delayed if she got to dinner before I did.
Outside, I was surprised to see that the earlier traffic jam had completely dissipated in the short time I'd been inside the museum. Everyone must be at home, enjoying their Thanksgiving traditions. Both the street and the sidewalks were virtually deserted, nothing moving except for some parade debris blown around by the wind. I knew Gil was only a few dozen feet away on the other side of the door that had locked behind me, but out here it felt like a ghost town, with all the shops closed and the windows dark. I'd been planning to catch the trolley to a stop closer to the police station, but perhaps I should have called a ride service instead. I got out my phone but paused before dialing to see if the trolley might be on its way.
There was no sign of it, but when I looked down at my phone again, I caught a glimpse of movement to my left. I turned to get a better view of whatever was happening over there and saw the one person I most emphatically did not want to run into right now in the nearly deserted center of town.
Sherman "Manny" Salomon.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Manny was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up and a scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face. The weather was still windy but nowhere near chilly enough to require that sort of bundling, so he had to have been trying to make it difficult for anyone to see his face clearly. He wasn't hard to identify, though, since he was still wearing his white painter's overalls, and his limp was distinctive. Given his obvious lack of planning before his other crimes that appeared to have at least begun as spur-of-the-moment smash-and-grabs, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd parked his truck nearby with the mural painted on its side, making it easy to identify. That was good for attracting clients but not so good for remaining anonymous.
And what was he planning to do that required anonymity anyway? He couldn't possibly know that I'd figured out that he'd killed Brooke, especially since I still wasn't sure exactly why he'd done it.
He caught up to me and grabbed the phone out of my hands. In a much deeper and more somber tone than his usual cheerful one, he said, "Gimme your purse too. And jewelry."
I was more irritated than frightened, so my nervous system wasn't sending any warning signals. Couldn't Manny see that I wasn't carrying my usual messenger bag today or any other purse? And I never wore jewelry. Any competent thief would have noticed how poor a mugging target I was before approaching me. Even my phone wasn't worth anything on the black market since it was several years old and had been a cheap brand to start with. I almost laughed at how ridiculously bad he was at pretending to be a thug. The long-ago pirates and smugglers who had infested Danger Cove early in its history would have considered Manny an insult to criminals everywhere.
Did he really think I didn't know who he was?
I reminded myself that murder was no laughing matter. If my theory was right, Manny had been carrying around a lot of rage for decades, giving it plenty of time to fester and erode his ability to think rationally. He'd probably found that killing Brooke hadn't done much to make him feel any less angry, so it wouldn't take much to push him into yet another act of rage. My best bet for now would be to go along with him, not letting him know that his silly disguise wasn't working.
"I don't have anything else you might want." I showed him my hands and wrists, totally without any jewelry, and waved at my neck and ears, equally unadorned. "You might as well take the phone and go."
His eyebrows lowered. "Why aren't you afraid?"
I was beginning to be scared, as evidenced by the hints of nausea rising into my chest, but I had plenty of experience hiding my feelings. It was a necessary skill for trial lawyers, who could never let the jury see any hint of weakness or doubt. "Should I be afraid?"
He seemed confused for a moment, and then muttered, "Oh, hell. You know who I am."
There was no point in denying it. "I do."
"Then you probably know why I need your phone." He dropped it to the sidewalk and stomped on it with his construction boots. "There. Now I've got nothing to worry about. No more pictures of Brooke's quilt to incriminate me. You can say whatever you want, but without proof, no one can do anything."
It was on the tip of my tongue to explain that the pictures weren't actually on the phone but saved in the cloud. Destroying the phone didn't destroy the pictures. But I remembered Tricia mentioning that Manny was something of a Luddite, shunning everything to do with technology. I wasn't sure he even owned a smartphone. Let him think he'd destroyed the only evidence that might convict him.
"I assume you already destroyed the quilt itself," I said.
"Burned it to ashes and tossed them into the cove," he said, destroying any remaining hope that he might have done something less final with it.
"Then you've got nothing to worry about," I lied. "No one else will be able to read the message it held now."
He narrowed his eyes at me before pulling a box cutter out of his sweatshirt pocket. With his other hand he pushed back the hood and scarf that had been obscuring his face. "You figured it out?"
"Most of it." There was no point in denying it, and I needed to buy some time to figure out how to get away from Manny in case he was planning to destroy the one remaining piece of evidence against him—me.
I was vaguely aware of the cameras along the eaves of the museum's roof. Gil had upgraded the security system after someone was killed in the back parking lot, but she hadn't limited the coverage to the secluded part of the property. The risk of anyone getting violent out here on the sidewalk wasn't likely in most circumstances since there was usually plenty of traffic to discourage serious crimes, but Gil had wanted to record smaller misdemeanors too in order to protect the historic building from the occasional prankster who thought it was funny to throw things a
t the doors and windows. The cameras were recording my interaction with Manny, and Gil generally glanced at the monitors on her way out of the museum. She'd be leaving soon to go home, where she'd need some time to change into something fabulous for dinner and collect the boyfriend and his wine.
The only question was whether she'd realize that our conversation wasn't as benign as it might appear. Gil knew I was in a hurry to get to the police station and then back home for my dinner guests, so I wouldn't voluntarily linger in front of the museum. The longer I stayed here in sight of the cameras, the better the chance that Gil would realize something was wrong.
If I tried to run away from Manny, I'd probably pass out, making it easy for him to silence me permanently. Better to keep him talking and hope that Gil noticed us on the security tapes. As long as I needed to keep Manny engaged, perhaps I could get him to confirm what I'd already guessed.
"I know that you and Brooke both lived in Kansas at the same time and you had a falling-out."
He snorted. "Falling-out? A bit more than that. She betrayed me, and I spent five years in prison." He tapped his left leg. "That's where I broke this, and the medical treatment was so bad it never healed properly."
Lawrence had said Brooke's partner had gotten in trouble for embezzlement, but I had another idea about what had really happened. He'd stolen money, but not from an employer. "You were arrested because of the credit cards?"
"Exactly." Manny's usual cheerfulness had been replaced by intense anger. He clenched the box cutter so tightly his knuckles whitened, and I had to take a deep breath to settle my increased nausea. "Brooke was happy enough when I showed her the credit cards I'd borrowed from a senile old neighbor. She was the one who came up with the idea to use them to get cash and inventory for the quilt shop she wanted to open. She spent a fortune getting a custom sign made for Trouble-Free Quilts. But once she had everything she wanted, she skipped town and left me holding the bag. My lawyer couldn't find her, and the cops didn't believe she was involved. Not a really popular teacher like she was, when I'd been more a troublemaker at our school. I lost my job and my friends, and I spent time in prison, and she didn't lose anything. She just went on with her life as usual."
"That must have made you furious." Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of movement on the street. If it was a vehicle, I could scream for help. I wasn't sure if Manny was foolish enough to attack me in front of a witness, but it was worth the risk. I concentrated on listening for an approaching car.
"I was angry at first, but then I got over it. I never cared about the quilt shop all that much. It was just supposed to be my ticket out of being a teacher, and it was, in a way. I got serious about my painting when I was locked up, and I started my own business once I got out."
Whatever had been moving on the street wasn't a vehicle, or it would have passed us by now. I needed to stall some more, and I might as well get as much information as I could to turn over to Detective Ohlsen. Assuming I survived this encounter.
"If you'd gotten over your anger, then why did you track Brooke down?"
"I didn't." Manny laughed. "Never used to believe in karma, but now I do. I tried to find her right after she left, but by the time I was arrested, I figured I'd never see her again. I mean, she and her husband moved every few years for the Air Force, and the trail was cold by the time I got out of prison. It was just fate that brought me here. I mean, what are the odds that we'd both end up here? I thought a touristy town like this would be good for business, enough time had passed that no one would know about my criminal record if I didn't bring it up, and I'd been using a different name for more than ten years, so I could pass a background check. I figured I could stand a couple of years of part-time teaching in order to get all the good publicity that comes with an artist-in-residence program. Didn't know Brooke was here until I showed up for my first class and saw her in the hallway."
"She must have been shocked when you showed up," I said, forcing myself not to look up at the security camera, so as not to draw Manny's attention to it. "Did she try to smooth things over with you? Apologize perhaps?"
"Of course not. Brooke never apologized for anything. She said I got what I deserved." His grin appeared suddenly, but it wasn't reassuring. "That's when I let her know that she too was going to get what she deserved. But not right away. I wanted her to suffer like I did."
That must have been when she'd started to make her quilt. It was, as Tricia had said, the only way Brooke had been able to talk about her feelings, at least outside her marriage, and she'd apparently been unwilling to share what had happened with her husband because of her intense need to be perfect for him. But had she been willing to risk death rather than admit to a serious moral failing? She might have thought initially that Manny was a threat to her happy marriage, and only realized toward the end of her work on the quilt that he was a more extreme threat.
"Did she know you were dangerous back when you worked together in Kansas?"
"I wasn't back then," he said. "At least not until she started to get second thoughts about what we'd done to stock the quilt shop. She started moaning about how disappointed her husband would be if he ever found out about the stolen credit cards. She couldn't stop talking about the saintly Lawrence. I should have killed him back then, before he could take her to Florida, and everything would have been different."
"You still would have been arrested for the credit card theft," I said.
"Perhaps." He glanced down at the sidewalk contemplatively, and I took advantage of his distraction to look up at the security camera. I couldn't move or shout or do anything that might get Gil's attention because it would get Manny's attention too. All I could do was stare at the lens intently, willing Gil to see me and realize something was wrong. My stomach was churning with nausea, and I was starting to get lightheaded. If Gil didn't leave soon and look at the security cameras on her way out, I'd have passed out before she could do me any good. Seeing me on the ground would alert her to a problem, but there was no guarantee that Manny wouldn't have dragged me out of sight before Gil saw me.
I returned my gaze to Manny's face just in time for him to look up and add, "Or perhaps I'd have gotten away with the crimes. I always suspected that Brooke was the one who put the cops onto me. Anonymous tip, they said. And it happened after she left town, when I couldn't do anything about it. She had to know I'd implicate her if it would get me a better deal, and she always thought the worst thing that could ever happen to her was if Lawrence found out that she'd been as guilty as me. Once I found her again, I held that over her head for as long as I could, and then I finally showed her there were worse things than being judged by her husband."
Manny seemed to have forgotten about the box cutter, even if I couldn't, while he was wrapped up in all of his justifications for what he'd done. If he stopped talking, he might well remember he had it. "Why escalate things now?"
"I intended to wait until the end of the school year, when I'd be ready to leave town anyway, but it was just too good an opportunity to pass up when I had the chance to take the miniature quilts and implicate her husband. I knew it would make her sweat, but I didn't expect it to push her over the edge. She said if I didn't return the quilts, she'd tell everyone about my past, even if she lost her job and her husband. She meant it too. She would have cost me this gig at the school, and probably most of my other customers too. Who wants to let an ex-con into their house to paint a mural in their kid's bedroom?"
"But you returned the quilts, so she didn't have any reason to tell anyone about your criminal history. Why not let it go at that?"
"When I took the little quilts to Brooke's house, she told me about the big one she'd made with the story of her life. She said it was her confession and that she was ready to come clean, that she couldn't live with the guilt any longer. I knew I had to destroy the quilt—and her—before she ruined my life again. I'd come prepared with a gun, in case she tried to have me arrested for stealing the guild's quilts.
" He laughed. "You almost caught me, you know. When you arrived, I was out back, breaking the window so it would look like someone had broken into the house instead of being let in by Brooke."
"But we didn't catch you," I said. "You knew to run then, and you should run now before someone comes by and sees us."
He grabbed my arm before I even realized he was planning anything. "Too late for that. You'll tell everyone what you found out, and then I'd have to go into hiding. If I make you go away like Brooke's quilt and the pictures, then I can finish out the semester here as the harmless artist in residence who does odd jobs on the side, shaking my head with disbelief that anyone would want to hurt poor, innocent little Brooke."
He started dragging me toward the alley that led to the museum's back parking lot. I dug in my heels—grateful that I was wearing walking shoes for the parade, not handicapped by less sensible shoes—but I was shaking from the adrenaline running through my system, making me weak instead of strong, and the lightheadedness threatened to cause me to fall over if I didn't concentrate on keeping up with Manny. Even through the mental confusion, I was keenly aware of the box cutter's blade held against my side.
We'd almost reached the alley when I heard a loud engine coming from behind the museum. Gil's SUV screeched to a halt with her bumper just inches away from Manny. She stuck her head out the window to shout, "Let her go. The police are on the way."
