The Double Wedding Ring

by Clare O'Donohue

  “Do you remember who was here?”

  Carrie shook her head. “Before the shooting? It was busy and I was focused on Eleanor’s quilt and Roger’s murder. I didn’t pay attention.”

  Neither had I. It was frustrating. “It’s just such a public threat,” I said. “If he really wanted to scare Jesse, there are simpler ways to do it. None of this makes sense.”

  “It never does until it does. We’ll figure this out.”

  I admired Carrie’s optimism even though I wasn’t sure if I shared it. It did snap me out of my own obsession about the shooter, though. “Before I went out back you said you wanted to tell me something.”

  She pulled me toward the back of the coffee shop, looked around to make sure no one was within earshot, then whispered, “I don’t know if you want to hear this.”

  I braced myself. “Hear what?”

  “I contacted my friends in the banking world. One of them works for the company where Roger and Anna have their accounts. He owed me a favor and now I definitely owe him one,” she said. “He wouldn’t give me a lot of information. He likes me but not enough to spend time in federal custody. He said Roger and Anna had a joint account, but he didn’t tell me the balance.”

  “You weren’t thinking he would?”

  “Of course not, but when I told him everything about the case, about Roger and Jesse and everything, he got interested. He told me Roger had an account, in his name only. He said it had more than fourteen thousand dollars in it.”

  “Okay. That’s a healthy account, but nothing out of the ordinary. What am I missing?”

  “Roger’s account is a money market that’s been open for just over three years. And in that time there have been about forty deposits for various amounts. My friend said they were small, nothing over five hundred dollars. Roger has never taken any of the money out. It just sits there.”

  “I’m not getting this, Carrie. You just said it’s a savings account. He deposited money and left it there, which is kind of the definition of saving. It’s probably from his paycheck. So what is it you’re not telling me?”

  She took a deep breath. Whatever it was, she wasn’t happy about having to tell me. “All the deposits have been from one source. A direct deposit from the account of Jesse Dewalt.”

  I replayed the last sentence in my head. “Jesse’s been sending Roger money for three years?”

  She nodded. “Do you have any idea why?”

  “He told me they hadn’t spoken since Lizzie’s funeral.”

  “Maybe it was a loan of some kind,” she said.

  “It must have been,” I agreed. “But why open a separate account? Why not pay into the Leightons’ joint account?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want his wife to know about it.”

  I finished my hot chocolate. “Over fourteen thousand dollars?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “That’s a lot of money for a police officer to loan a friend,” I said. “Where would he have gotten it?”

  Carrie didn’t have an answer. All she had was another question. “What if it wasn’t a loan? What if Jesse was paying Roger for some reason?”

  “What, like blackmail?” I meant it as a joke, but Carrie didn’t laugh. My stomach tightened at all the possibilities: blackmail, bribery, money laundering. None of it seemed remotely possible, not for the man I loved. “Whatever the reason,” I said, “we keep this within the group. Jesse didn’t do anything wrong and there’s no point in hurting his reputation.”

  “Don’t you think the state police are going to look into Roger’s finances and come across all of this?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “They’re not on the investigation. Jesse is running it. It’s his town. The state police were here because of the shooting, and only as support for the Archers Rest PD. Jesse has been absolutely insistent on doing this his way.”

  Almost as if he had something to hide. The thought crept into my mind and I pushed it out again.

  “It’s got to be a loan,” Carrie said. Sometimes, if you don’t know the answer, picking a theory and sounding very sure about it feels like almost the same thing. “When we know the truth we’ll both feel silly that we worried for even a second. Jesse’s a good man and he loves you.”

  Which were the exact words he’d said to me not even twenty-four hours before.

  CHAPTER 27

  Carrie had customers and I knew I should go back to the shop. But instead I finished the hot chocolate she’d given me and ordered another one. I sat at a table near the back. I needed a moment alone, and preferably not standing on a windy, snow-covered roof, to think and strategize.

  “Big picture,” I said to myself, trying to take my mom’s advice. I was getting sucked in to the details of the shooting and there was so much else—the wedding, my parents, school, quilting, and, most of all, Jesse. I wanted to find Roger’s killer and, by doing that, identify the person who put a hole through the Someday sign. I told myself it was because I wanted to help Jesse get justice for his friend. But maybe another reason, a more selfish reason, was because I wanted Jesse to need me, to prove that we were a great team. Or worse, maybe I just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

  Of course, if I was really in danger, then my other motivations were trivial. I had to find the killer before a warning turned into a second murder.

  I could see Greg sitting by himself at a table near the window, poring over his police notebook with an intensity that I’d rarely seen in him. I knew that asking him about the investigation would just cause trouble for both of us, but it wasn’t clues I needed anyway. It was advice.

  “Can I join you?”

  Greg looked up. “Sure, yeah.”

  I put my hot chocolate down at his table and sat opposite him. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “If it’s about the murder . . .”

  “It’s not. Not really. It’s about Jesse. How is he handling the investigation?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is he doing okay or is he overwhelmed?”

  “Are you asking if he needs help?”

  I shrugged. I was, kind of. “Is he letting you help?”

  “After the business card thing, he’s doing everything by the book. Mostly he’s doing it without anyone’s help, but he’s following procedure.”

  “Do you think he’s trying to do it all alone because Roger was his friend and he feels some kind of obligation to solve the murder himself, or do you think there’s another reason?”

  I could see that he was looking at me differently, trying to figure out what I knew that he didn’t. It might have helped us both if I shared what Carrie had found out about the bank account, but that wasn’t an option. “He’s struggling with something,” Greg said finally. “Not sure what it is.”

  “I know they were very close . . .” I started.

  Greg rolled his eyes.

  “What?” I asked. “I knew they had some kind of falling out, but I don’t know what it was about.”

  Greg leaned forward. “I don’t know the whole story, but Jesse was smart to stay away from that guy. Jesse is a good guy, and a good cop.”

  “And Roger wasn’t?”

  “I don’t know. If Jesse’s not telling you why they stopped speaking, you can be sure he’s not telling me. But what kind of guy stakes out the house of an old friend? If Roger was a decent person with no ill intent, he’d have picked up the phone and called Jesse. But he sat in his car drinking coffee and watching the house like he was in the middle of some big undercover operation.”

  “If Roger wasn’t a good guy, wouldn’t Jesse expose that if it meant catching the killer? Would he really risk letting a murderer go free?”

  “There’s a loyalty among cops. I would do anything for Jesse. . . .”

  “Not anything illegal.”
>
  He shrugged. “No, of course not. But I’d do whatever I could to protect him.” Greg sighed. “We shouldn’t be talking about the investigation. I know we’re both a little frustrated to be shut out, but I can’t ask Jesse to do things by the book if I’m going to go behind his back.” He put his hand over his police notebook, where I could see the word Walker circled. When he saw me looking, he shut the book. “How’s the wedding planning going?” he asked.

  “Under control. I have to finish my wedding gift, and Natalie is quilting the one from the group, but other than that . . .”

  “Cake, band, decorations . . .”

  “All figured out,” I said. “Are you bringing a date?”

  He smiled. “Kennette is coming into town, so we’re going to go together.” Kennette was Oliver’s granddaughter. She’d been studying art in London for the last year, but she was coming back for the wedding.

  “You guys have stayed in touch?”

  “A little. E-mails mostly. She’s a great person and she seems to think I’m okay.” He smiled.

  Romance was everywhere in Archers Rest these days. “She’d be lucky to have you, Greg.”

  “I guess I want what you and Jesse have.”

  “I’m not sure what we have at the moment,” I said. “It’s not just Roger’s murder. Anna is sort of driving a wedge through our relationship.”

  “She’s not after Jesse,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything, but I hadn’t been thinking of her as competition. Not just because her husband’s body had been discovered only two days earlier and he had once been a close friend of Jesse’s, but because I’d learned the hard way that if someone wants to stray there’s nothing you can do to stop them, and if they want to be faithful there’s nothing anyone else can do to make them cheat. I knew Jesse well enough to know that if he wanted to be with another woman, he’d tell me.

  Anna wasn’t trying to get Jesse for herself. Either unintentionally or out of some unnecessary loyalty to Lizzie’s memory, she kept reminding me that Jesse had already found the love of his life, and I wasn’t it.

  “She’s walking around in a daze, I think,” Greg continued. “Full of guilt if you ask me.”

  “Guilt about what?”

  “She’s with that guy.”

  “Bob Marshall?”

  “No, the other guy. The business partner. He came up today.”

  “Brown hair, camel hair coat.”

  “Yeah. Jesse said he put up the money for her interior design business and I guess it turned into something more.”

  “Is it a motive for murder?” I asked.

  “I think it’s the oldest one there is.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Someday Quilts was quiet when I opened the door. No customers, no dog, no tiny black and white kitten. No mom, despite the fact that her car was still parked outside the shop. And, oddest of all, no Eleanor.

  “Grandma?” I called out. “Are you here somewhere?”

  I walked past the register, past the St. Patrick’s Day and Easter fabrics that were displayed near the front, past the cutting table, the sale section, past the threads and notions wall. I took a left at the longarm machine, with a quilt in the frame that had been covered with a large piece of muslin. Natalie sometimes covered quilts to keep off the dust, but I knew that wasn’t the reason this time. Eleanor’s wedding quilt was under there. After a peek at the amazing work Natalie was doing, adding hearts to each block, and feathers in the border, I entered the classroom.

  Eleanor and my mother were quietly studying my gazebo quilt in progress. Barney was curled up by Eleanor’s feet, and Patch was sitting on a table watching him.

  “Didn’t you hear me calling for you?” I asked.

  Both women looked up at me as if I’d woken them from a spell.

  “You guys shouldn’t be looking at this,” I said when I saw them with the quilt. “It’s your wedding gift, Grandma.”

  “Sorry. We came in here to chat and when I saw it, I couldn’t help myself,” she said. “It’s beautiful. I can’t wait to see what it looks like when it’s finished.”

  There was no point in hiding it anymore and I was dying to share. I moved over to the drawing pad I’d left on the table and flipped through until I came to my sketch. “This is my plan,” I told her. “I think I could make simple embroidered flowers for the base of the gazebo. It would be easier than trying to appliqué really small pieces.”

  “Much,” Eleanor agreed. “And you could add some vines up the gazebo. We don’t have them in real life, but I always thought it would look pretty with vines.”

  She was right, it would be the perfect addition. I quickly added vines to the sketch. Vines that didn’t break, of course. I didn’t believe in quilt superstitions, but there was no point in inviting bad luck.

  My mother was sitting quietly, watching us. She had a small, sad smile on her face.

  “What do you think, Mom?” I asked.

  “It’s lovely,” she said. “You’ve always been a very talented artist and I think Oliver was right—you really have a gift for fabric, like your grandmother.”

  “I’m trying to figure out a way to do this for a living,” I said.

  “Making quilts?” my mother asked.

  “No. Patterns.”

  Eleanor’s eyes widened. “Someday Quilts Designs. We could sell them in the shop, and on the website. . . .”

  “You have a website?” my mother jumped in.

  I laughed a little. “We have one page that shows a picture of the shop and our hours and directions. I’ve wanted to expand it, but Grandma doesn’t want to sell fabrics online and I didn’t know what else to put on it.”

  “Putting our fabrics online would mean ordering much bigger amounts, changing the inventory frequently, having a shipping department. It’s a full-time job,” Eleanor said. “But patterns make sense for our size shop. We could sell those. They would be a huge hit.”

  “Do you think?” It had been sitting in my mind for a while, but doing it, really selling patterns of my work, seemed daunting and even a little cocky. “Do you think my stuff is good enough that someone would want to re-create it?”

  “Yes!” my mother and grandmother said in unison. Probably the first time they’d agreed since my parents’ arrival.

  I flipped through my sketchbook, showing them various ideas I had, getting their thoughts on how to proceed. My grandmother, like me, was a detail thinker. She focused on creating the actual pattern, getting good photos of my quilts, price points, and packaging. My mom thought big. She wondered aloud about other websites to sell my patterns, suggested I look into publishing instruction books. She started looking on the Web for the best shows to enter quilts, even finding international ones in places like Ireland and Australia. It was getting a little overwhelming, but it was nice to feel that my mom saw quilting as a real future for me.

  “Will you have time for all of this?” Eleanor asked. “With school and your work here, and Jesse?”

  “This is her career,” my mother answered for me. “This is something she’s building for herself. She shouldn’t concern herself with whether it conflicts with a dinner date. Does Jesse leave a crime scene because they have movie plans?”

  I laughed a little at that. I was usually at the crime scene with him. As the two women who loved me the most were loudly debating my future, my cell phone rang. “I’ll be right back,” I said, grateful for any chance to sneak away from the conversation, but especially grateful that it was Jesse.

  “Hey, there,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “Can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you have time to pick up Allie from school and take her home? There’s some fruit and cheese, I think, if you guys want a snack. I shouldn’t be more than an hour.”

  “
The investigation heating up?”

  “No. Anna wants to go visit Lizzie’s grave. I’m not sure it’s the right time for that considering what she’s already going through, but she says it will bring her some comfort.”

  “Oh, sure, I can see that.” And it will remind Jesse of how much he misses his late wife, I thought.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked.

  “Why would I mind?”

  “I have a lot of responsibilities, and your mother is right—it’s sort of an instant family pushed on you when you still have the freedom to go where you want, when you want.”

  “Like the free spirit I was before we met? Backpacking through the jungles and mixing it up with the jet set?”

  “That’s great.” In order to pick up on my sarcasm he had to actually listen to me, which he clearly wasn’t doing. “Listen, Anna is here. Allie gets out at two forty-five and you have to meet her by the north entrance to the school.”

  “I know where to meet her,” I said, but he had hung up. I’d picked up Allie from school dozens of times, but this was the first time I’d felt like the babysitter. Never mind, I decided. Anna will be gone soon and life will go back to normal. After Roger’s killer is caught, I reminded myself. And the reason Jesse has for paying Roger is explained. And my parents accept that this is where I live, and Jesse is who I want to be with. Then life will return to normal.

  But without Eleanor as my roommate and full-time boss.

  CHAPTER 29

  I didn’t hear the bell to the shop door ring, so I nearly jumped when I heard my name. Bob Marshall was standing in front of me. But as soon as I glanced at him, he walked past me.

  “I see a doggy bed but no dog,” he said.

  “He’s in the classroom.”

  “Teacher or student?”

  I laughed. “A little of both, usually. Are you here for your sister’s gift?”

  “Yeah. But she has a lot of fabric, so I don’t think she needs more of that.”

  I laughed again, which I soon realized seemed rude. “Sorry, it’s a quilter’s thing. We never have enough fabric.”