Knot Ready for Murder

by Mary Marks

  “Designing quilts isn’t much different. Nowadays, if you visit a quilt store, you’ll find a kaleidoscope of hues and prints to choose from. A finished quilt is something new that is greater than the sum of its parts.”

  “What do you think about this one?” Fanya pointed to a photo of an Ohio Star quilt. “I could see this done in many different colors.”

  “Ohio Star is a perfect block for beginners. I have one of those on my bed right now. It’s not too hard to construct. Especially for someone with your skills as an artisan. I think you’re going to like our little group of quilters.”

  At ten sharp, the others began to arrive. Jazz Fletcher, a successful menswear designer and business owner came with his Maltese Zsa Zsa Galore. The fifty-something Jazz wore a pink linen shirt with a mandarin collar and tan linen trousers with pleats in front. As usual, he dressed Zsa Zsa in a matching pinafore of pink organza. I introduced him to Fanya and a smile lit his face.

  “So you’re Yossi’s sister? A pleasure to meet you.”

  Giselle breezed in carrying an aqua-blue leather tote bag and a pink cardboard box tied with white string. “Chocolate éclairs from Benesch.” The wind tousled her normally perfectly coiffed hair. Hands full of stuff, she jerked her head to the side, trying to coax a stray lock of auburn off her face.

  Lucy Mondello, my best friend, came in next with her across-the-street neighbor Birdie Watson, also my friend. Lucy was in her sixties, with orange hair, courtesy of L’Oréal, and carefully drawn eyebrows. She was nearly six feet tall and walked like a runway model in black-and-white houndstooth check slacks and a black cashmere pullover.

  In contrast, Birdie was in her seventies and dressed in denim overalls, a white T-shirt, and Birkenstock sandals. Her long, white hair featured a turquoise streak and a purple streak undulating in and out of the braid hanging down her back.

  Lucy, Birdie, and I were the original members of the Tuesday Morning Quilters, meeting every week for two decades. Then we welcomed Jazz into our midst and most recently, Giselle.

  After introducing Fanya, I put the éclairs on a plate, served coffee, and settled in the living room for a morning of quilting and noshing.

  Lucy gave Fanya a knowing smile. “It’s nice to meet another woman as tall as I am.”

  As I threaded my needle to help Lucy piece her blocks, Fanya said, “Martha, you need to put some thread in your mouth to chew on.”

  “Did I hear you right? Chew on some thread?”

  Everyone stopped what they were doing to listen.

  She nodded vigorously and looked at the others in the group. “Oh, yes. You all should do that to make sure you don’t accidentally sew up your wits.”

  Giselle wrinkled her forehead. “Sew up your wits? What does that even mean?”

  Fanya seemed unfazed. “Some say it’s an old bubbe meiser to chew on a piece of thread while you’re sewing, but I know for a fact a tailor in our neighborhood was taken to a mental hospital because he forgot to chew!”

  “Whoa.” Jazz broke off some thread from his spool of green thread and put it in his mouth. Then he broke off four other pieces and handed them to each of us. “Better not to take any chances.”

  I reluctantly accepted the thread. “My uncle Isaac was a tailor. I’ll have to ask him if he ever chewed on thread.”

  “Listen up, everyone.” Giselle raised her voice for attention. “We have two big things to tell you. One happy, one bad. Which should I start with?”

  “Give us the good news first, hon.” Lucy’s jaw muscles worked as she chewed her piece of green thread. “I always like to be fortified by the good news before hearing the bad.”

  “Okay. So, first of all, Martha told Yossi at dinner on Friday night she’s ready to get married.”

  “What?” “When?” Birdie and Lucy spoke at the same time.

  “For real?” Jazz asked.

  Everyone began speaking at once. Jazz looked at me over the rims of his magnifying eyeglasses with a big smile. “Our little Martha? It’s about time! Mozzle tov!” he said in a near approximation of the Hebrew words of congratulations. “I’ll make your wedding dress. I might even make matching outfits for all of us. We can be your bridesmaids and bridesman. Where’s the ceremony going to be?”

  “At my house, where Quincy was married.” Giselle had hosted the wedding of Quincy and Noah Kaplan at Giselle’s late grandparents’ lavish estate in Beverly Hills. The Eagan estate, as it was known, could accommodate five hundred guests. Quincy and Noah didn’t have even a fraction of that many guests. My wedding would be even smaller. A lot smaller.

  Birdie delicately nibbled on the thread. “I was sorry to miss Quincy’s wedding. Lucy’s description of the whole event was most intriguing. I hear your parents’ estate is gorgeous, Giselle dear. Like a museum. This is one wedding I won’t miss.” She beamed at me. “Martha dear, will you have a color theme?”

  “I haven’t actually thought very far ahead. White dresses and color themes all seem inappropriate for a divorcée in her fifties. Yossi and I will be married by a rabbi, and we’ll ask Uncle Isaac to help officiate. I’ll have to think about what I want to wear.”

  Of course, the question of a wedding would be moot if we failed to find Hadas and get a legal divorce.

  Lucy reached for an éclair. “You said two pieces of news, good and bad. What’s the bad piece?”

  Giselle gave me a look saying, You tell them.

  CHAPTER 9

  I broke the shocking news to my friends about Crusher being married and Hadas being missing.

  Birdie stopped sewing and grabbed the end of her long, white braid. “What do you know about her, Martha? Why was she abducted?”

  “We don’t know. But I don’t trust Hadas one little bit. Not after she announced she wanted to take Yossi back to New York and resume their married life.” I filled the group in on what had happened since Fanya and Hadas’s arrival the previous Saturday evening. “So far, that’s all we know.”

  Lucy frowned. “Correct me if I’m wrong, hon. Yossi was married about thirty years ago and never told you?”

  “Well, he thought the marriage legally ended back then when he signed the papers for an annulment. He only recently discovered the documents were never filed.”

  “Who dropped the ball?”

  “Hadas. Turns out she used the marriage as a convenient excuse to stay single and have a career. She devoted herself to running her father’s shmata business.”

  “Wait,” Fanya said. “In Hadas’s defense, she genuinely has feelings for my brother. She’s not as mercenary as you’re making her out to be. I think she’s lonely.”

  Jazz waved a dismissive hand. “Well, let her be lonely with someone else’s fiancé.”

  Too distracted to work on my own quilt, I helped Lucy stitch together the curves of four-inch square Robbing Peter to Pay Paul blocks. Each block featured a quarter circle of contrasting fabric in the corner. The quarter circle had a convex curve and the background square had a matching concave curve. The secret to creating a curved seam was to clip the edge of the inner curve so it would bend enough to fit around the outer curve.

  Lucy knotted a new length of thread. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying your ex, Detective Arlo Beavers, is in charge of finding your fiancé Yossi’s wife of thirty years so Yossi can get a divorce and marry you?”

  Jazz shoved Fanya’s arm with his elbow and snorted. “This is better than the Byzantine twists in the reality show Angry Housewives of Van Nuys! Have you seen it?”

  “I live in the big apple. New Yorkers don’t know from Van Nuys.”

  “Oh dear.” Birdie tugged her braid. “If finding Hadas alive is the goal, don’t you think Arlo has a conflict of interest? He may still have feelings for you, Martha. Until Arlo finds Hadas, Yossi won’t be free to marry you. At least not for another seven years. Isn’t that how long you have to wait to declare someone legally dead?”

  “First of all, I doubt Arlo has ‘feelings’ for me an
ymore. However, I did suggest to him that he recuse himself because of our history. But he insisted on leading the investigation.”

  Giselle cleared her throat. “Well, we’re doing some investigating of our own. I asked Shadow to see what he could find out about Hadas and the Uhrman Company.”

  “Giselle . . .” I said in a warning voice. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Who’s Shadow?” Fanya looked around the circle of faces.

  “He’s a hacker Giselle keeps in her employ,” I said.

  She corrected me. “A former hacker, Sissy. Now he’s my IT guy and head of research. He sometimes stumbles across useful information not readily available online.”

  “Sounds like a hacker to me,” I said.

  Giselle sniffed. “I don’t ask. He doesn’t tell.”

  “Did he find anything useful?” Fanya asked.

  Giselle sat a little straighter and cleared her throat. I knew my sister well enough to know she was about to say something juicy. “A year ago, the Uhrman Company dipped in the red because of large cash withdrawals. About six months ago, the situation reversed. Uhrman began operating in the black again. Big money comes and goes on a regular basis.”

  An alarm went off in my head. “Six months you say? Hadas’s brother Ze’ev Uhrman was killed by a hit-and-run driver six months ago.”

  Fanya paled and gasped. “Are you suggesting the two things are connected?”

  “Think about it. The business is failing, largely because it was bleeding cash every month. Then Ze’ev dies, and suddenly the business is thriving again. What if his death wasn’t an accident? What if it was deliberate?”

  Birdie tugged her braid. “Murdered?”

  A high squeak of horror escaped Fanya’s open mouth. “God forbid! Pu, pu, pu. Has v’halilah and three oy gevalts.”

  Giselle frowned. “What is she doing?”

  “It’s a precaution against the evil eye,” I explained. “Anyway, I don’t like coincidences. At the very least, I think his death is worth looking into.”

  Giselle stopped chewing her thread. “Speaking of investigations, Sissy. Weren’t we going to go around and talk to your neighbors?”

  “I’d be glad to help.” Birdie said. “I’ve been watching a lot of British detective shows on Amazon Prime lately, and I’ve learned a few pointers about interviewing perps. Of course, the British system isn’t exactly the same as ours. I noticed right off that their Miranda warning is different. Plus, they have solicitors and barristers, not plain lawyers. And their DAs are called ‘silks.’ And everyone wears those silly white wigs. They don’t even try to hide their real hair. They just plop on the wig like a curly white hat and away they go.”

  “Are you calling Martha’s neighbors ‘perps?’” Jazz chuckled.

  I sighed. “I thought I could canvass the neighbors today after we’ve finished sewing. It’s not necessary for everyone to help, Birdie. Although, I appreciate the offer. I’m only going to question my immediate neighbors. Chances are, people living farther down the street wouldn’t have seen anything from that far away.”

  I’d also seek out the Eyes of Encino, our neighborhood watch that patrolled the streets at night. It was a long shot, but maybe one of them saw something in the early morning hours.

  CHAPTER 10

  At three in the afternoon, Lucy, Birdie, and Jazz said their goodbyes, but Giselle insisted on staying.

  “Really, G, I can question the neighbors on my own. Don’t you have an oil empire to run, or something?”

  My sister gathered her sewing and stowed it in her new aqua-blue leather tote bag. “I won’t intrude, Sissy. I’ll record the interviews with my smartphone. No one will even notice me.”

  Like that would ever happen. My forty-something sister was beautiful in face and in body. Because she inherited an oil company to run, she was very wealthy and dressed like she’d just walked off the pages of Vogue magazine. With all her diamonds and expensive clothing, she’d not only be noticed, she’d be the focus of attention.

  “No way. You can’t record someone without their consent. The last thing I want to do is alienate my neighbors.”

  She rolled her eyes. “So how are you planning to take notes if someone tells you something important?”

  “Okay. I get your point. You can bring a notepad and pen. But that’s all.”

  “What about me?” Fanya stepped closer. “I want to come, too. I need to do something to find Hadas, besides sitting and waiting.”

  Our first stop was across the street to talk to Sonia Spiegelman Fuentes. She’d been Mick Jagger’s girlfriend for five minutes back in her groovy days. Now, in her very early fifties, she’d recently married Hector Fuentes, Crusher’s colleague in the ATF. Hector’s street name was Malo, which meant “bad” in Spanish.

  Don’t ask.

  Sonia painted her house a light turquoise and her front door purple. She believed the colors offered some kind of cosmic protection I never quite understood. Some of the neighbors were vocal in their disapproval of nontraditional colors until Malo moved in. One warning look coming from the Latino with a long black ponytail and tattoos on his face was enough to silence Sonia’s critics.

  She must’ve seen us coming because she opened the door before I could knock. “Martha. Giselle.” She grinned and gestured for us to follow her inside. “How nice to see you both.” She offered her hand to Fanya. “Hello. I’m Sonia Fuentes.”

  Fanya seemed fascinated by Sonia, the former hippie flower child with long graying hair and thick green eye shadow. She looked around the living room as we sat down. “Have you ever thought of putting up wallpaper? I install wall coverings for a living. I could show you something funky and psychedelic in an iridescent foil.”

  “Puhleez!” Giselle made a face.

  Sonia formed an “O” with her mouth. “Oh my God. Iridescent? Can you show me something in a lime green?”

  “I sure can.”

  “How much do you charge?”

  “It goes by the number of rolls.”

  Giselle interrupted. “Are both of you crazy or merely having an attack of mutual bad taste? Why don’t you hang a mirrored disco ball from the ceiling while you’re at it?”

  Sonia ignored her and reached for my hand and gave it a little squeeze. “I’ve been dying to ask. What’s going on at your house?”

  I told her about Hadas. “We’ve been waiting for the kidnappers to contact us, but so far they’ve been silent. Did you see anything?”

  “We left the house to visit friends on Sunday around noon. I saw a blue SUV parked in front of your house but thought you were having company. The car was gone by the time we got back.”

  “Did the police ever question you?”

  “Oh, yes. We didn’t know anything was wrong until the cops came knocking at our door Sunday evening. I told them about the blue SUV. Then they came back the next day and asked about a black Jeep Cherokee. What’s going on?”

  “The forensic team worked in the house from Sunday afternoon until about three Monday morning. Sometime between the time the police left my house and the time we came back a few hours later, we found the house had been ransacked a second time.”

  “Whaaat?” Sonia’s jaw dropped. “They came back again?”

  “We’re pretty sure it was the same people. We actually surprised them in the act, but they got away before Yossi could stop them. I only got a partial on the license plate. It was a stolen car. No help there.” I could always count on Sonia, the neighborhood yenta, to collect stray bits of harmless gossip. “Have you talked to the other neighbors, by any chance?”

  Sonia pursed her lips. “Um, not really. Hector and I have been pretty busy with DCFS lately, training to qualify as a resource family for foster care. The rules for becoming a foster parent changed recently. Hopefully this new system will keep people who have no business being around children from qualifying as providers.” She fanned the air in front of her face. “Oh man. Don’t get me started!”

/>   I tried to steer her back on track. “What about the Eyes of Encino?” Years ago, Sonia organized a local group of retired military vets and others to patrol the streets in two-hour shifts at night. During the summer, when the air was balmy, they all wore yellow T-shirts with an eyeball logo printed on the back. “Do you know if the police questioned them?”

  Sonia stood and walked to the kitchen to retrieve her smartphone. “I’ll call Ron Wilson and ask. He keeps track of the patrol schedule and logbooks. You remember him from before, don’t you?”

  I’d worked with Ron briefly a few years ago when murder paid a visit to our neighborhood. “Sure I remember. The Eyes saved my life.”

  We decided to walk to Ron’s house since it was on the next street over, not far away. The streets in our area were lined with mature trees, some of them over fifty years old. They provided leafy shade, especially in the heat of summer. However, the invasive roots of those lovely liquid ambers buckled the sidewalks, making them look like scattered decks of cards.

  Fifteen minutes later, we knocked on a red front door. The tan doormat under our feet read WELCOME in black letters.

  Ron’s petite wife opened the door and smiled. “Hi, Sonia. He’s waiting for you.”

  Ron Wilson was a veteran of Korea and Vietnam. Now, in his later years, he’d turned into a big teddy bear of a man with a head of short white hair resembling a large scrub brush. Suffering from severe mobility problems, Ron didn’t rise from his adjustable chair to greet us. “Martha!” he boomed. “Trouble at your place again? We have to stop meeting this way.” He laughed at his own joke.

  I walked over to his recliner and gave him a peck on the cheek. Then I introduced Fanya and Giselle. “Can we see the logbook for Sunday night and early Monday morning?”

  “Way ahead of you.” He reached for a blue spiral notebook next to his chair and turned the pages to the most recent handwritten entries. “Okay. What do we have here? Hm. Oh yeah. Tony Di Arco took the two a.m. to four a.m. shift on Monday morning. He logged an LAPD van in front of your address at two-fifteen a.m., two-thirty, and again at two-forty-five. At three-fifteen a.m. he noted the van was gone.” Ron looked up from the notebook. “There’s nothing else.”