A Quilt in Time (A Harriet Turman/Loose Threads Mystery)

by Arlene Sachitano

  Harriet held her hands up in front of her.

  “I’m not a detective, and I don’t know if you heard, but my friends’ cars were all blown up in my driveway a few days ago. Someone was sending me and my group a message. I received it loud and clear.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Jo said.

  “It was in the paper,” Harriet protested.

  “Not that. I don’t believe you could be frightened off that easily. The fact that someone is trying to put you off just means they think you’re the person who is most likely to find them out. Now is the time to press your advantage, even if you can’t see what it is yet.”

  Mickey leaned toward Harriet.

  “Unless you’re chicken, that is.”

  “I can’t go wheeling in there, or I would,” Janice said in a low voice. “Seth’s death is related to something that’s going on here. We know it, and you know it. We aren’t physically capable of doing a proper investigation. We thought we could count on you.”

  “Janice was an investigative reporter in Seattle,” Violet added, ever the proud mother figure. “She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.”

  Jo’s shoulders drooped.

  “Forget it, guys. We can’t ask a civilian to take a risk she doesn’t want to take. She’s right. What we’re asking her to do is dangerous; the car bombings prove that.”

  Harriet took a deep breath.

  “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  “Do you know how to pick locks?” Mickey asked her.

  “I thought you said you had a key.” Harriet wiped her palms on the back of her jeans.

  “We do,” Jo said in a hushed tone. “We have a door key, but if there are records of what he’s doing, they’re likely to be in a locked file.”

  “And his office has a private conference room and bath attached,” Violet added.

  Mickey led the way to the hall.

  “I’ll stroll over to the memory care unit and keep an eye on Howard. He’ll stay over there until the reporters arrive—I heard Hannah say he was meeting them there. But he may decide to bring them to his office, maybe even before they tour.

  “If he finishes early or heads to his office before the tour, I’ll signal Janice in the dining area, and she can create a distraction. Violet will keep eyes on Janice and will signal Jo so she can warn you.

  “I got a guy in the assisted living area who’s going to get Hannah off the front desk—they have video monitors up there. We can count on Syd, though, he’ll keep her busy. He worked forty years on the carnival circuit; he can con anyone.”

  Harriet took another deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “You guys have thought of everything.”

  Mickey stopped and looked back to her.

  “Get going. You only have fifteen minutes for certain.”

  Lauren joined Violet and Janice as Harriet went with Jo toward Howard’s office and Mickey went to his post as lookout.

  “What’s going on?” Harriet heard her ask. A moment later, she appeared at her side.

  Harriet slid the stolen key into the lock on Howard’s office door.

  “It appears we’re going to search Howard’s office after all.”

  Howard had spared no expense when it came to his surroundings. Harriet imagined Donald Trump’s must look something like this—with a million-dollar view added, of course.

  The two women stepped into a lush leather-and-brass living room setup. A sofa, love seat and two side chairs surrounded a black glass coffee table. Behind this reception area was a heavy wood desk with a top-line leather chair. A smaller secretary’s desk and chair sat to one side. Doors opened off either side of the area—the aforementioned bathroom and conference room, no doubt.

  Harriet crossed to the desk, but there were no papers on its surface and a quick check showed the drawers were locked. A credenza behind the desk revealed a row of unlocked horizontal file drawers.

  “Take a quick look at these,” she said and gestured to the files. “I’m going to check out the conference room, or whatever is behind this door.” She stepped toward the door to the right of the desk.

  Lauren stood in front of the files.

  “You can pretty well guess that if he leaves these unlocked, there isn’t going to be anything worth finding.”

  “Let’s look anyway,” Harriet said and disappeared into Howard’s private conference room. She closed the door behind her.

  A large conference table dominated the space. The usual oversized commercial art offerings adorned the walls—pastel squares on an off-white background and a yacht-racing scene done in pale blues. But something was missing. More than one something.

  For starters, there were only three chairs, and they were all on one side of the table. And the buffet didn’t hold a pitcher and glasses. There were no tablets of paper, no teleconferencing equipment. Instead, the buffet held a precision scale and a bowl of empty capsules. Did they have it wrong? Was Howard dealing illegal drugs?

  Before she could ponder the answer, the door was flung open.

  “Someone’s on their way in,” Lauren said. “I don’t know who, but their key was in the lock.” She held her hand to her beating heart. “I thought you had a lookout.”

  “I do,” Harriet whispered. “I did.”

  “You can come out,” said an unfamiliar voice from somewhere near the floor. Harriet’s eyes followed the baseboard around the room until she found an old-fashioned speakerphone on the floor. She looked at Lauren, but Lauren shrugged.

  “Come on out,” the voice said again. “Or else I’m coming in.”

  Harriet didn’t recognize the voice, but it was hard to distinguish, coming from the tinny speaker. She looked at Lauren again then opened the door.

  “My, my, who have we here?” said a small blond man. His curly straw-colored hair stopped just short of his shoulders. “Harriet Truman, isn’t it? And, I’m sorry. You are?” He reached toward Lauren as if to shake hands. She stared at his hand, frozen.

  “Well, never mind, friend of Harriet Truman. As I’m sure you’ve both guessed, I’m Joshua Pratt, Howard’s adopted stepson.”

  Harriet stepped closer so she could look him in the eye.

  “Did you blow up the cars in my driveway?”

  The left side of his mouth lifted slightly.

  “Of course not. Why on earth would you think that?”

  “Maybe because the police found you in my bushes, right after the cars went boom.”

  Lauren followed Harriet’s lead, joining her in front of Joshua.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Howard didn’t give you that key.”

  “And if he did?”

  “But he didn’t,” Harriet said. “And we’re wasting time.”

  A knock sounded on the door, followed by a loud whisper.

  “Get out now!”

  Harriet didn’t waste any time. She grabbed Lauren by the arm and pulled her to the door, where they both slipped out into Jo’s waiting grasp.

  “Come on, Howard’s coming.”

  The older woman led them across the hall and into what appeared to be a locker room for the nurses’ aides. No one was sitting at the kitchen table. A door led from the back of the room to a dressing area complete with two showers. From there, another doorway led to a storeroom, which connected to a commercial laundry area and then a residents’ laundry room. Finally, they went through a door that deposited them in the main independent living hallway.

  “Come on,” Jo said, but Lauren leaned against the wall.

  “My heart can’t take much more of this,” she said. “I thought you were the lookout.”

  “I saw Joshua come into the hall, but we didn’t realize he had a key. I can guarantee Howard didn’t give it to him. They don’t even have a copy of his key in the emergency access key box at the front desk.”

  Harriet started toward the common room.

  “We need to get back to the group.”

  Jo left them and headed in
the opposite direction.

  “Do you think Joshua got out?” Lauren asked.

  “I don’t know, and at the moment, I don’t really care, but I’m sure he’s used to dealing with his stepdad if he didn’t.”

  Aunt Beth’s head was bent over her work when Harriet returned to the group, some of whom were busy cutting hexagons from card stock then handing them across the table to other members, who laid them on fabric then cut the shape out again, this time from fabric, leaving a quarter-inch margin outside the paper. Dark spots of color marked her cheeks, the only indication that anything was other than normal.

  She looked up at her niece. “Where have you been?”

  Harriet could tell from her tone she wasn’t making small talk.

  Mavis stopped cutting and looked at Harriet as well.

  “Violet wouldn’t tell us anything, and she seemed to be the only one who knew where you were.”

  Harriet looked pointedly at a small woman she’d never seen before sitting to Mavis’s left. She and another woman had joined the group today. Mavis shrugged, but Harriet was reluctant to speak in front of the new people until they’d gotten some indication from Jo or Mickey whether the newcomers could be trusted to keep their mouths shut and neither one of them had returned yet.

  Sabrina hustled in before the pause became awkward.

  “How are things going in here? I’m sorry I couldn’t check in sooner, but one of the residents from the assisted living area had a small accident in the lobby. He’ll be fine, but as you can imagine, we were anxious to take care of him before the visitors came back out there.”

  “We’re fine here,” Mavis said. “We need to cut a lot of hexagons from both card stock and fabric. Next time, we’ll iron the edges of the fabric over the paper pieces and then we can start whip-stitching the units together. It’s all hand sewing, so everyone can work on it.”

  Sabrina glanced back over her shoulder.

  “That’s great. If you’re sure everything’s fine here, I’m going to go see if I can help with our guests.”

  “We’re good,” Harriet said and watched as Sabrina disappeared down the hallway.

  A moment later, Mickey returned, pushing Janice in front of him. It appeared to Harriet that it was more a case of Mickey using Janice’s chair as a walker than him pushing the woman, but she kept her observation to herself.

  Everyone was sewing quietly when Jo finally reappeared.

  “So, did you have time to find anything out?” she asked.

  Harriet glanced again at the two newcomers.

  “Don’t worry about Eunice and Mary,” Mickey told her. “They’re part of this.”

  Aunt Beth set her scissors down on the table.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to know what you’ve gotten my niece into. I don’t appreciate being kept in the dark about it.”

  Mickey struggled to his feet.

  “We meant no offense, Ms. Carlson. We didn’t have time to fill you all in. We saw an opportunity and took it.”

  “Apparently, you had time to tell Harriet and Lauren,” Aunt Beth shot back.

  Jo leaned across the table toward her.

  “I’m sorry. Something terrible is going on here, not the least of which is the murder of Seth Pratt. It took us more than a week to secure a copy of Howard’s office key. He guards the place like it’s a maximum security prison. A rare opportunity to search it presented itself. As we told your niece, we aren’t physically capable of doing some of this stuff ourselves or we would. We had safeguards in place so she wouldn’t be caught.”

  “Except that we were,” Lauren said from her spot at the end of the sewing table.

  Janice wheeled across the room, looked into the hallway and, apparently seeing no one, wheeled back.

  “Joshua isn’t going to tell anyone Harriet and Lauren were there. He would have to confess he was there, too, and I assure you, he won’t. I’m not sure what his agenda is, but very likely it’s similar to ours. He definitely isn’t in Howard’s inner circle.”

  “Just because he doesn’t like his stepdad, it doesn’t mean he’s on our side,” Harriet observed.

  Mickey walked to her side of the table.

  “Enough with the chitchat. What did you find?”

  Lauren looked at Harriet and waited for her to speak.

  “Not much,” Harriet finally said. “He has a lot of expensive office furniture. He had files in the outer office that were unlocked. Lauren can tell you about them. I had just gotten into the conference room when Joshua showed up.”

  “So all this effort was a big waste of time?” Janice asked.

  “Let me finish,” Harriet said. “We didn’t have time to search, but the conference room isn’t set up like any meeting room I’ve ever seen. The table only has chairs on one side, and the credenza has a precision scale and a slew of empty capsules.”

  “So, he’s got an illegal drug operation?” Violet asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Harriet corrected. “He could be repackaging the drugs that are prescribed for the patients. If he was selling illicit drugs, he wouldn’t have needed to send Seth to pharmacy school. Maybe they’re diluting the drugs they give patients.”

  Connie looked up from her stitching.

  “They could make a lot of money doing that. Rod’s aunt had one prescription that cost seven hundred dollars a month. Her insurance paid for it, but if she was only getting half the dose and her prescription coverage was paying for it, Howard could pocket a really good profit.”

  She paused for a moment, looking thoughtful.

  “Her doctor upped the dosage of her medicine when it wasn’t working well enough in the beginning, until eventually her symptoms went away.” She shook her head. “I remember him remarking at the time that people who’d never had the drug before usually had a better response to the lower dosage than she did.”

  Harriet picked up a pencil and a paper hexagon and started tracing more images onto blank card stock.

  “If that’s the game they’re playing, Howard wouldn’t have much of a motive to kill Seth. I mean, he was the one figuring out which drugs it was both safe and profitable to dilute. Seems like Howard needed him.”

  “Maybe the kid grew a conscience,” Mickey said. “It happens, you know. I knew a guy once…” The Loose Threads stopped stitching and looked at the old man. “Well, never mind. Let’s just say, people never cease to amaze.”

  Mavis started stitching again.

  “So, where does that leave us,” she asked without looking up.

  No one spoke for a minute.

  “I’d like to talk to Joshua,” Harriet finally said. “I asked him if he bombed our cars, and he said he didn’t.”

  “Did you think he’d tell you the truth?” Lauren objected.

  “Maybe,” Harriet continued. “In any case, I’d like to know what he was looking for in Howard’s office. He may not be on our team, but I’m still curious. I’d be willing to bet he knows more about what goes on in this place than almost anyone else.”

  “He seems like a guy who has secrets,” Lauren admitted. “By tomorrow, I should know what some of those secrets are. That might give us a little leverage when we talk to him.”

  Aunt Beth glanced at her watch and put her stitching down.

  “I just want to go on record here. I don’t think we should be sneaking around this place trying to act like we’re the police—or the CIA.” She looked directly at Jo for emphasis before continuing. “If we come across evidence in the course of things, fine, but we don’t need to be breaking into someone’s office or worse. Detective Morse is a competent investigator. If anything comes up, we need to call her.”

  Mickey shuffled over to Beth’s side and stood looking down at her.

  “That would be great if the world was a perfect place. I’m here to tell you, dearie, most days it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Howard has worked very hard to cover himself in a cloak of respectability. The cops are not going to loo
k too hard at the number-one contributor to their charity programs. And you can take that to the bank.” He went back to his chair and sat down.

  Violet poured a glass of water from a pitcher sitting at the end of the table.

  “Pass this to Mickey,” she told Connie. “Don’t get yourself worked up,” she said to him. “You know your heart can’t take too much excitement.”

  Jo cleared her throat.

  “Can we talk about the business at hand?”

  “I thought we were,” Connie said.

  “I mean the quilt. So far, we’re doing scrappy flowers, but have you any idea about what the unifying background color will be? And shouldn’t we have a common color for the center of each flower?”

  “Jo’s right,” Violet said. “There are traditions about these things. The centers should be yellow to represent the center of the flower, and then the next row is any color to represent the petals of the flower. We’ll have to decide if the flowers will be connected by white for a picket fence or green for a garden path.”

  “Diós mio,” Connie whispered.

  “How about we let you ladies decide about the green or white, and I’ll come take you to the fabric store and you can pick out that color and whatever yellow you want for the centers,” Harriet offered.

  “Perfect,” Jo said. “How about we go out to lunch, my treat, and pick up fabric on the way home?”

  Harriet looked at Lauren, who raised her eyebrow and tilted her head slightly in assent.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Chapter 16

  “Anyone want to come try Jorge’s new recipe for Oaxacan grilled shrimp?” said Aiden’s disembodied voice over the speaker of Harriet’s phone as she began the drive to deposit Mavis, Lauren and her aunt back to their respective homes.

  Mavis leaned forward between the front seats and said in a loud voice, “Sounds good to me.” She looked back at Beth. “Beth’s in, too.”

  Lauren picked up the phone.

  “Sure, why not.” She moved it closer to Harriet.