Scraps of Evidence: Quilts of Love Series (12 page)

With that, she left him, walking up to her front door, and letting herself into the house. He sat there drumming his fingers on the steering wheel for a long moment, and then he backed out of the driveway and turned toward home.

13

T
ess rubbed at her eyes and put the lighthouse quilt down for a moment.

She hadn’t slept well, and when her neighbor had woken her early mowing his lawn, she’d gotten up, fixed a cup of coffee, and took the quilt out onto the front porch. She sat in a big old weather-beaten wicker chair she couldn’t bear to throw away. It creaked as she sat there stitching on the quilt.

Fall was in the air. She could smell the difference in it. Few trees changed color here, so the signs of fall were harder to spot. It was more a difference in the muggy smell of air and a drop in temperature that signaled the change of season.

Fred next door knew. The dachshund sat on his porch deeply sniffing the air. Tess smiled as she sipped her coffee.

A car pulled into her driveway. Logan. He got out, reached into the back seat, and she saw he’d bought a huge pumpkin. It must have weighed a ton but he carried it easily, climbed the steps, and set it down.

“Peace offering.”

She raised her brows. “I’ve never been brought a pumpkin for a peace offering.”

“I brought some flowers, too, but I thought I’d get this out first.”

“Flowers will be a comedown after a pumpkin.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too. Maybe I’ll just leave them in the car.”

“Don’t you dare!”

She watched him walk out to the car and return with a pot of golden mums. “Pretty. Thank you.” She gestured at the wicker sofa. “Have a seat.”

He sat, stretching out his long jeans-clad legs. “Is that what you’ve been working on in your classes?”

She nodded. “I’ve never done one like this before. Want some coffee?”

“I can get it. Don’t get up.” He paused on his way inside. “Want some more?”

“I better not. This is my second cup.”

He went inside and returned with a mug. “Why a lighthouse?”

Tess ran a hand over the quilt, then looked up at him with a frown. “I don’t know. I just felt like I needed to do it.”

She pulled quilt blocks from the tote bag sitting beside her and moved them around on her lap. So far she’d made several: one was a sailboat, another a picnic table with a lunch spread out on a cloth, another children playing on the grounds. Another, a couple standing at the top of the lighthouse, looking out at the view. Her favorite was the one she’d designed of a girl in an old-fashioned blue gown with a billowy long skirt.

Blue. She stopped and a memory washed over her . . . Sam twirling around in her blue prom dress, her shoulders wrapped in a lacy summer shawl.

“Tess?”

She shook her head and came back to today. “I suppose going over the case made me think about it. The lighthouse, I mean.”

She leaned back in her chair and looked out at the neighborhood. “I told you that Sam worked there. She loved the lighthouse and loved showing it to visitors. In a way, I’m not surprised she was found there. She would have felt safe on the grounds.”

“It may be the killer is trying to tell us that,” he said quietly. “She felt safe with whoever she went there with or whoever she met there. She knew them. Even if she was upset with weasel Wendell, would she have gone there at night by herself? Was it just an opportunity killing? One where she just happened to be there? I kind of doubt it, don’t you?” He paused. “Are all the squares—what do you call them?”

“Quilt blocks.”

“Are those all part of some pattern?”

“No, I designed them. Why?”

Logan set his mug down and leaned over to study them. “How did you decide what blocks you want?”

She smiled at him. “You don’t have to show interest in this. Most men aren’t interested in quilting.”

He met her gaze. “I don’t play those games. I’m interested in what you’re interested in. But I have a reason for asking. I’m wondering if you’re using this as a problem-solving technique. If you’re using it to puzzle out some aspect of the crime.”

“I wondered that myself.”

“You look tired.”

“Gee, thanks. Just what a girl wants to hear.”

“If it’s any consolation, I didn’t sleep well, either. I don’t like it that we argued.” He reached over, and this time, she took his hand.

“I don’t either.”

“Truce?”

“Truce.”

“Listen, do you have plans? If you don’t, I thought we could take a drive, have some lunch.”

“I don’t have plans until later.”

“Later?”

“The barbecue at my aunt and Gordon’s. You were invited, remember? Everyone at work was.”

“I wasn’t sure if I’d go.”

She gave him a direct look. “Because of last night?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“I see. Well, I wouldn’t have been and there’s no reason now, right?”

“Right. So I guess I’m going.”

“Anyway, my only plan for today was to make a quick visit to Mrs. Ramsey. So if you don’t mind, I want to do it before we go to lunch. It won’t take long. I stop in every couple weeks when I have a Saturday off.”

“She’s a nice lady. I wouldn’t mind at all. Are you sure she won’t mind me coming with you?”

Tess shook her head and began putting her quilting pieces back in her tote bag. “She seemed to like you.”

She happened to glance in the backseat of the car as she got in. There was another big pumpkin and a pot of mums sitting on the back seat.

Curiosity killed her, but she wasn’t going to ask who they were for. When Logan glanced over at her, she pretended she hadn’t been looking, but she figured he’d noticed when she saw the smile playing around his lips.

When they got out of the car at Mrs. Ramsey’s, he reached into the back seat and hefted the pumpkin in his arms. “Will you get the flowers?”

“Sure.”

“Now I’m glad I got extra. They had a good sale and you know, it was—”

“For a good cause,” she finished.

He grinned. “Yeah.”

“Why, what a nice surprise!” Mrs. Ramsey said when she opened the door. “And look what you’ve brought!”

“These are from Logan,” Tess told her as she set the pot of flowers down on a table on the porch.

“Where shall I put this?” he asked.

Mrs. Ramsey pointed to the wide concrete edging on the porch. “Let’s put it over here, where people can see it from the street. Thank you so much, Logan. That was very sweet.”

When they went inside, she insisted on making them tea. Logan carried the tray out to the living room, and she hurried to move the newspaper from the coffee table so he could set it down.

“Mmm, these are so good,” he said as he popped the last of the second cookie into his mouth. “You should go into business. Mrs. Fields would go broke.”

She laughed and shook her head. “I just use the recipe on the back of the tollhouse morsels.”

“Mine never turn out as good,” Tess told him.

They chatted about the changing weather, Mrs. Ramsey’s grandchildren, Logan’s adjustment to the city and the job.

Then Tess leaned forward. “Mrs. Ramsey, tell me about Machiavelli.”

Machiavelli?

Logan had been sitting there, mellowing out on some of the best chocolate chip cookies he’d ever eaten, enjoying a leisurely Saturday off, when Tess brought up the wax museum.

A couple chocolate chips lodged in his throat, and he coughed as he remembered the argument from the previous night. He reached for his tea and washed them down. “That the guy you found the rose near last night?”

Tess nodded and looked at Mrs. Ramsey. “There was a break-in at the wax museum last night. I went in and just as I was leaving I found a rose near a figure of Machiavelli.”

“Ah, Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “Fifteenth-century Italian politician in the time of the Medici family. Fascinating man. His very name has come to represent manipulation and political machinations.”

She picked up the plate of cookies and offered them to Tess, then Logan.

“We didn’t study his writing in the English class you took with me,” she told Tess. “He’s usually studied in college—not just in literature classes but political science classes. He’s best known for writing
The Prince
and
The Art of War.
”

“I read that in college,” Logan remembered. “
The Prince
. As I remember it, he believed that the ends justified the means, that—” he stopped as there was loud banging on the front door and then a key turned in the lock.

“Gramma!” a child shouted, and a small whirlwind in pigtails and a pink tutu ran into the room.

Cats scattered to the four corners of the house.

Mrs. Ramsey grinned and held out her arms. “Katie-kins! There’s my grandgirl!”

A young woman walked in and smiled. “Sorry, there’s no restraining her. Hi, Tess.”

“Hi, Lindsey. This is Logan. Logan, Lindsey graduated two years before me and works as a nurse.”

“Becoming a nurse was good training for having kids,” Lindsey said as she reached for a cookie. “Between Katie and my son, Mark, I spend a lot of time taking care of scrapes and boo-boos.”

Tess stood and bent to hug Mrs. Ramsey. “We just stopped by for a few minutes. We’ll let you visit with your family.”

“Don’t let us chase you off,” Lindsey protested. “Katie, do NOT pull Jezebel’s tail or you’re going to get scratched.”

Katie put her hands behind her back and tried to look innocent.

“We’re not letting you chase us off,” Tess assured Lindsey. “Logan and I have plans.”

Logan took Tess’s lead and got to his feet. Mrs. Ramsey held out her arms to him and they hugged.

“Thank you both for the pumpkin and the flowers.”

“Our pleasure,” he said. He saw the warm smile Tess sent him.

“Can we make a jack-o-lantern, Gramma?” he heard Katie ask as they walked to the door.

They stopped at a seafood place for lunch and sat on the deck for a while and listened to a man who sang about summer fading fast. The day was beautiful, so the tourists were out. “I thought we could take a drive down A1A, the ocean highway.”

“Sounds good.”

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as they drove. The ocean spread out to their left, a beautiful aquamarine.

“They don’t have that in Chicago,” Tess told him.

Logan grinned at her. “I know. I hope you don’t take this for granted.”

Tess pulled the band from her hair and let it blow in the breeze coming in the window. “Never. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

“Do we have time to walk on the beach for a few minutes?”

“Sure.”

Logan parked, and they walked down the stairs over the dunes to the sand below. He took off his Dockers, and Tess kicked off her flip-flops. It felt a little strange to feel the warm sand beneath his feet and the sun on his shoulders. He wondered how long it would be before this stopped feeling like a vacation place and just felt like home.

Sandpipers skittered along the edge of the water, darting back and forth as the waves splashed at their feet. A seagull cried as it circled over a family sitting on a blanket and eating. A little boy threw a crust of bread, and the gull caught it neatly in its beak.

The sand was a pinkish color here. Logan bent to scoop up a handful to look at it.

“It’s mixed with crushed coquina, a soft stone, here in Flagler Beach,” she told him. “It’s a different composition than up at St. Augustine beach.”

They walked for a time, and then Tess dropped to the soft, dry sand near a clump of tall, waving sea oats. “I’m so tired,” she complained. “Not enough sleep. Too much sun. Too much lunch.”

He sat next to her and watched the waves with her and wondered when was the last time he’d felt so peaceful. A few minutes later, he felt himself smiling when she leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. Then he realized she was sleeping. He’d never seen her so relaxed. Something relaxed in him, too; they’d gotten past what had happened the night before or she couldn’t be as relaxed with him.

The waves rolled in, then out, a timeless rhythm. Sitting here, staring at the vast expanse of the ocean, made him wonder at the bigger picture. He’d been angry at God for taking his friend, a little depressed at the emptiness he felt after the big case was solved—it had given him something to focus his anger on for a long time. He’d felt driven . . . and then there was no place to put all that anger and effort.

He’d thought he’d come here for the challenge of solving another big case, but gradually this woman had gotten under his skin. And he started wanting more. He wanted some normalcy. Some pleasure in a day like this.

Maybe even a future with a woman like this.

People talked about God having a plan for their lives. He’d thought he had his own plan and hadn’t ever really felt like there was some big divine plan for him.

Now he wondered.

Something was coming back to life again within him and if he knew Jason as he did, he knew he’d be happy. Just before he’d died, Jason had looked at him one day and said, “Don’t take yourself so seriously. Lighten up.”

The people down the beach got up, gathered up their blanket, and headed to their car. Without moving too much and waking Tess up, Logan turned his wrist and checked the time. He didn’t want to wake her. She must need the rest. But she might not be happy if they were late to her aunt’s party.