Two Sleuths Are Better Than One

by Elizabeth Ashby

  Dee held out her flask by way of greeting. "Want some?"

  "No, thank you," I said. "I'm looking for Zoe Costa."

  Dee hugged her flask to her chest, the condensation leaving a damp mark on her pale blue blouse. "She didn't show. Again. I thought she was more reliable than this."

  "She will be here," Emma said soothingly. "Any minute now, I'm sure."

  The delay gave me an opportunity to ask about the possibility that Gabe had been cheating on his wife. The quilters were much better plugged into the local grapevine than I was.

  "I've got a question about last week's meeting," I said. "Did Gabe have anyone with him then?"

  The two women exchanged glances before Emma said tentatively, "He did have a woman with him."

  "Hmph," Dee said. "More of a girl than a woman."

  "Did he say why he brought her?"

  "He claimed she was a business associate," Dee said. "And maybe she was, but she didn't seem qualified for any kind of legal job."

  "She did have a tendency to tuck herself under his arm as if he were a particularly snuggly quilt," Emma said. "But some people are more touchy-feely than others. She could have been a family friend."

  Dee rolled her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous. Anyone could see they were having an affair."

  I looked at Emma.

  She sighed before nodding. "It did look that way. She certainly wasn't interested in any of the quilts people were working on, and she didn't even pay much attention to Gabe's presentation. She spent most of the time texting. She only put her phone down when a smattering of applause indicated his speech had ended. She jumped up and clapped and whistled as if he'd made some earthshattering announcement."

  "I don't suppose you recall her name?"

  The women looked at each other. "Sorry," Emma said. "Do you want me to ask around to see if anyone remembers?"

  "That would be helpful," I said, although if Emma didn't remember the name, I doubted anyone else would. Dee and the rest of the guild counted on her to take care of details like that. Maybe Andy's widow would know who the other woman was. I could ask Maria to find out for me.

  Emma nodded toward the parking lot. "There's Zoe now. You wanted to talk to her about Gabe, right?"

  I nodded.

  "I'll go get her while Dee gets back to work. Then you and Zoe can talk in private."

  Dee didn't seem inclined to leave, obviously intent on listening to my questioning.

  Emma gave her unmoving friend a look before adding, "Everyone will slack off without Dee to keep an eye on them."

  At that, Dee reluctantly got to her feet and headed back to the bee while Emma went off to retrieve Zoe.

  A moment later, Emma returned with Zoe in tow. The quiltmaker was a tall, heavyset woman who made me think of sturdy pioneer women who worked alongside their husbands in the fields from sun-up to sundown. Her dark hair was short but almost as shaggy as Matt's could get, and her jeans and sweatshirt were both faded and unraveling in spots, suggesting she cared about appearances as little as he did. The only new part of her outfit was a large zippered canvas tote bag, but it was less a fashion statement than a marketing piece, much like my own quilted messenger bag, since it had her name and "quilt artist" hand-embroidered on it in multicolored threads.

  Emma introduced us quickly and hurried off with a muttered, "I can't even leave Dee on her own for two seconds without her getting into trouble."

  I had enough on my mind right now without turning to see what Dee was up to. Emma could handle it.

  Zoe settled into Dee's seat, placing her tote bag at her feet. "Emma said you wanted to know about my deal with that rat, Gabe Portillo."

  Apparently Zoe either didn't know or didn't care that she might be considered a suspect in his death. It wasn't my place to warn her, although I couldn't help worrying about her naiveté.

  "I'm trying to figure out what Gabe was doing in the hours that led up to his death," I said. "I thought you might have spent more time with him on Saturday than anyone else in the guild."

  "I'm trying not to think about how much time and energy I wasted on him," Zoe said. "The quilt he ordered took me easily twice as long as a standard commission. He got it into his head that since king-size quilts are relatively rare, that would make it more valuable. He didn't care that it would also be far more work than the average size."

  "Why did you take the commission if it was that much work?"

  "I didn't have any other immediate deadlines, so I could fit it into my schedule, and he tempted me by offering me wide latitude on the design. Not everyone does that, so I spend a lot of time working on quilts that don't appeal to me personally all that much. This one was different though. I got to choose most of the elements, and I'd been wanting to play with the traditional Shoo-Fly block for quite a while."

  "As an appraiser, I'm not supposed to be biased, but that's one of my favorites."

  "You know what's really ironic, in retrospect? The thing that sweetened the deal and finally convinced me to agree to the price was his promise to tell all his millionaire friends about how great my work was so I'd get great exposure with people who could afford their own commissions. He always made a big deal out of all the celebrities and millionaires he hung out with." Zoe snorted. "And then when it came time to pay up, he threatened to bad-mouth me with those same potential customers if I didn't agree to a discount."

  "I'm sure you had nothing to worry about," I said, although I couldn't help thinking that if the threat was real, then Gabe's death before he returned to Seattle meant he hadn't had time to do any damage to Zoe's reputation. "The work would speak for itself, and I've heard that it was beautiful."

  "True." After a moment of glum silence, she perked up. "Would you like to see it? I have pictures on my phone." She didn't wait for my answer but began scrolling through her digital gallery.

  She was already handing me the phone as I said, "I'd love to."

  It was hard to tell how big it was from a picture without anything for scale, but it was, as Matt had said, a Modern quilt and absolutely stunning. The background was a mix of grays that set off the teal and occasional purple pieces that formed a mix of partial and complete Shoo-Fly blocks. The piecing was simple, but the feathery background machine-quilting looked to be heirloom quality and labor-intensive.

  "It's truly lovely." I handed the camera back to her. "What could Gabe possibly have complained about?"

  "He said it was like half an inch less than the specified size." Zoe shrugged. "Art isn't like engineering. Dimensions are a bit fuzzy, especially with textiles. The quilt starts out being to spec, a bit larger actually, but then the quilting causes it to sort of pull in on itself, shrinking the dimensions slightly. I do my best to compensate for that, but it's hard to be exact, and generally anything within a couple of inches is considered acceptable."

  "So what happened when he said it was too small?"

  "He refused to pay the balance that was due on delivery, so I said he couldn't have the quilt until he did."

  "How did he react?"

  "It was weird. He didn't seem upset at all," Zoe's square face was reddening as she relived the experience. "He said that even though it wasn't up to his standards, he'd take it off my hands for a tiny fraction of the remaining balance. I think he'd been planning to cheat me all along, and he'd just been looking for an excuse. He'd signed off on the original design, fabric samples, and progress pictures I sent him. He'd told me repeatedly how much he loved my work. As far as I could tell, he'd been satisfied with everything I'd done, right up to the point where he had to pay up."

  "Why would he think you'd take a reduced price instead of just selling to another buyer?"

  "I think he's played this sort of game before," Zoe said. "He knows it will be difficult to sell the quilt to someone else for much more than he was offering, and even if I could, I'd still make less profit. I'll have to waste time on finding a new buyer instead of working on a new quilt, and there could be additional expenses,
like paying a dealer's commission, which wasn't factored into the price I charged Gabe."

  "Why didn't you take his offer then?"

  "Because I don't give in to bullies," Zoe said.

  "And you think he's done this before?"

  "I've come to think it was his basic modus operandi, getting things for free or at least less than they should have cost. He was always bragging about being worth a billion dollars, and what he agreed to pay for the quilt in total, not just the balance he owed, was pocket change for someone with his money, so why not just pay it unless he liked messing with people?"

  I'd met people like that in my legal practice. Often it was someone who claimed he was going to court "on principle," but as far as I could tell, the principle was just that he should always get what he wanted.

  Zoe was on a roll. "Gabe bragged about how he hadn't brought any money or credit cards with him from Seattle because he'd made the quilt guild agree to pay for everything he needed from the minute he left his house in Seattle to when he got back home. Car service, meals, even a haircut and drink at The Clip and Sip. He was particularly proud of the fact that the guild gave him the money it would have cost for two nights at Ocean View B&B before he found a free place to stay."

  If he hadn't had any money or credit cards on him and he'd never taken possession of the quilt, then he hadn't been killed as part of a robbery gone wrong. I could definitively exclude that as a possible motive for his murder.

  "Emma must have been livid over his abuse of the guild's money."

  "She was," Zoe said. "But not as upset as she was over his cheating me and the possibility that he'd done it to other quilt artists who made pieces for his collection. The whole point of his stupid presentation to the guild was how great an investment his quilt collection was going to be. Which seemed kind of odd to me and everyone else I talked to, unless he meant that it would benefit his great-great-grandkids in another hundred years or so. You know how undervalued most quilts are until they become antiques."

  I nodded, and Zoe continued, "So the only way he could be counting on a good rate of return was if he was cheating all the quiltmakers he contracted with. Most artists aren't tough enough to turn down a sale, no matter how bad a deal it is." She grinned. "You should have seen the look on Gabe's face when I said he could take his deal and shove it. I don't think anyone's ever said no to him before. And it was even worse for him because his bimbo was standing right there beside him, watching him lose the argument."

  "I've been trying to find out who the woman is," I said. "Did you get her name?"

  "It's Tess Abbott." She pulled out her phone again, found the picture she wanted, and held it out to me. It was another one of Zoe's quilt with a young redheaded woman standing in front of it. She was, at most, in her early twenties and wore a tight tank top that showed off the only rounded part of her otherwise bony body, a generously curved chest. "She insisted on my taking her picture with the quilt, as if she cared about it."

  "Could I have a copy of that?" I gave her my business card with the number to text it to.

  "Sure."

  "Thanks," I said. "And thanks for answering my questions."

  "Emma said you were helping the police figure out who killed Gabe," Zoe said. "I didn't like him, but he belonged in jail for fraud, not in a coffin."

  "What are you going to do with the quilt now?"

  "If it weren't for the bad memories, I'd keep it for myself. I still like the design and the colors, but I'll never be able to look at it again without thinking of Gabe trying to cheat me, and that's not good for my blood pressure. So I guess I'll put it up for sale once I'm sure the widow isn't planning to claim it."

  "I'm sure someone will snap it up. Stefan Anderson at the folk-art gallery might be able to find you a buyer if you don't have any luck on your own."

  "Good idea."

  I was trying to come up with a way to ask her where she was at the time of the murder on Saturday without implicitly accusing her of the crime when Dee shouted Zoe's name and gestured emphatically for her to hurry up and get to work on the quilt.

  "Gotta go," she said. "I hope you catch Gabe's killer."

  "And I hope you find a more deserving collector for your quilt."

  *

  Matt wasn't due to pick me up for a while yet, so I still had time to see if any other quilters knew anything more about the other likely suspects in Gabe's death besides Zoe: his widow and his girlfriend. I was particularly curious about whether Georgia had known about his affair with Tess Abbott. But there was a crowd gathered around Dee at the moment as she gave what appeared to be an impromptu demonstration of the hand-stitching that held the layers of a traditionally finished quilt together. Emma was explaining while Dee stitched with slow, exaggerated motions.

  I couldn't question them at the moment, but their activity reminded me of the other demonstrations happening over in front of the historical garden. I'd promised Matt that I'd check out the salsa demonstrations on his behalf and let him know if I heard any good advice.

  I picked up my bag of vegetables, wishing Matt had come to the market with me so I could have stowed them in his truck, and wandered over to the salsa demonstrations. Maria Dolores was at the edge of the crowd on the side nearest the market stalls. I went over to see if she'd learned anything useful besides what she'd texted me.

  She caught sight of me and hurried over. "I hope you're getting more leads on Gabe's murder than I am on Coach Andy's. As far as I can tell, no one in Danger Cove, maybe no one on the whole planet, had any reason to kill him."

  I laughed. "I have the opposite problem. Just about everyone who's ever met Gabe wanted him to disappear, if not necessarily to die. And I've got some solid evidence that he was cheating on his wife with a busty, barely legal redhead, which means both Georgia and the mistress are potential suspects."

  "Want to trade cases?" Maria asked.

  "Beware of what you wish for," I said. "If you take on Gabe's case, you'll have to deal with Dee and Emma."

  "I'd better stick to what I know."

  "I do have one lead for you, even if it's not too likely," I said. "Someone made a scene at a football game a few years ago, yelling at Coach Andy. The mayor ought to know who it was."

  "I'll look into it." At a shout from someone in the salsa demonstration audience, Maria turned to see what was happening. It was just a lover of hot peppers who'd gotten a bit excited about something the speaker had said about the ideal number of jalapenos in a salsa recipe, so Maria relaxed and turned back to me. "I have something for you too. The mayor told me Gabe skipped out on his debts the last time he came to Danger Cove. Maybe he cheated someone else this time, and that person wasn't content with simply complaining to the mayor. They could have argued and it ended with him falling off the deck."

  "That's really good to know," I said. "It's consistent with what the quiltmaker told me about his refusing to pay for her work. She thought he made a habit of doing that sort of thing, and it sounds like she's right."

  "But it also makes her a prime suspect."

  "She should be, but I just don't know," I said. "She didn't seem like the type to do things in the dark. If she wanted to kill someone, she'd challenge him to a duel on Main Street. I know it's not concrete evidence, which is what my lawyer brain insists on. But I've learned to pay attention to my gut, quite literally, since it's probably saved my life in the past, giving me a little warning that something bad was about to happen. And right now, my gut is telling me Zoe didn't do it."

  "So we're back to the wives as the prime suspects," Maria said. "I bet that's where Detective Marshall is going with the case too. The mayor says the arrest of Gabe's killer is imminent."

  "Dee and Emma won't be satisfied with anything short of a confession," I said. "They certainly won't believe anything Marshall says about the case."

  "I still think the two cases are connected," Maria said. "And not just because I'm desperate for a suspect."

  "It's definitely wor
th considering. I'm told that the two wives were friends, closer than Coach Andy and Gabe were. That gives some credence to your theory that they killed each other's spouse."

  "So we need to find out if the women have alibis, not just for when their own husband died but for when the other one did."

  I nodded. "I was planning to find out more about Gabe's widow, especially whether she knew about the mistress. I'd also like to know whether she's been spending any time with Andy's widow since Gabe's death. I'm not sure which would be more suspicious—frequently getting together this past week or pretending not to know each other. Either way, Bree Milford might be able to tell me about Georgia's comings and goings while she's been staying at the Ocean View B&B."

  "Most weekends you could find Bree here, but I don't expect her today," Maria said. "I tried to talk her into entering the salsa contest, but she said she'd do me a favor and pretend she'd never heard about it. She claims that for the safety of those she loves and anyone who might be on call with the first responders who have to deal with the fallout from her setting foot in a kitchen, her salsa recipe consists of picking up the best pre-made version she can find at the store and putting it in a bowl."

  "I can stop by the B&B again. I probably have time to walk there and back before Matt comes here to pick me up today." Especially if he was still dithering over which stove options he could live without.

  "I need to stay here until the end of the market hours, of course, but I can ask around some more about possible suspects. And I'll check with the mayor about the guy who was angry with Andy," Maria said. "Perhaps we could meet up later to compare notes."

  "Good idea," I said. "I'll check in with you at the end of the day."

  CHAPTER NINE

  Maria Dolores

  The mayor was keeping the audience engaged during a break between speakers, so I couldn't question him immediately. There were two other people at the market who might have some information on the incident at a high school game though: Cassidi Conti and Tommy Fordham. I'd lost track of Cassidi, so that left Tommy as the best possible source of information.