A Murder of Taste: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery (18 page)

Po looked closer, then squinted, as if shifting the photo into a different kind of focus. She stepped back. “Amber,” she said softly, “can you make Ann Woods a redhead?”

“Sure,” Amber said. “Photoshop is my second name.” In minutes the plain brown-haired girl on the screen was turned into a redhead.

“Now some color to her cheeks,” Po said. “And even out her complexion. Maybe smooth the hair a little and straighten out the nose.”

Kate stared. She saw it now, too, and knew exactly where Po was headed. And somehow it wasn’t a surprise.

Amber moved a small paintbrush across the pocked face, and in seconds, the Carrie-like young woman had disappeared.

Ann Woods wasn’t Ann Woods any longer. Ann Woods was Laurel St. Pierre.

CHAPTER 19

Kate and Po stared at the picture.

Po shook her head. “I think I’ve known we were headed this way for awhile. But I couldn’t connect the dots quite right.”

“Remember when I said Laurel stared at me sometimes? Now I understand. She probably thought I was ‘one of them’—all those kids who teased her mercilessly.”

“The poor dear girl. What a life she must have had back then.”

“Didn’t Selma say her mom sent her away to get away from the father?” Kate couldn’t take her eyes off the class picture. Laurel’s beauty was hidden, but it was there, behind the sad eyes and the angry set to the narrow jaw. “Imagine, Po, having to send your own daughter away at that age. I think of you and mom, of Sophie and me. It’s unimaginable. It must have been so hard for Esther. But why did she let Picasso bring her back here, to all those memories of that sad life. Do you suppose Picasso knows about all this?”

“Or the police? I think we’d better find out.”

Within the hour, Kate and Po had found P.J. He was sitting on the small deck of the old carriage house he rented just south of Po’s home. He wore sweats and a t-shirt, still damp from his morning run, and was reading the morning paper. Without much discussion and ignoring P.J.’s frown at their investigative fervor, Kate dropped the yearbook in his lap, and then handed him a copy of the photo Amber had doctored with Photoshop, transforming the plain Ann Woods into the glamorous woman who had married Picasso St. Pierre. She followed it with a brief explanation. Danny Halloran said Esther sent her daughter away—there was trouble, he said.

“So now the police’ll have a new direction in which to go,” Kate said as P.J. stared at the pictures in his lap. “Maybe there’s a police report or something about the dad causing trouble, the mom sending her away.” Unsaid, but as clear as the spring sky, were the words: And leave our friend Picasso alone.

“I remember Ann Woods now,” P.J. said, pointing at the yearbook photo. “I felt sorry for her. Guys used her mercilessly. I remember her sitting alone in the football stands when we’d be playing. She was always there, always staring at the team. I think she had a crush on someone, but no one would own up to it. They’d just point and laugh. Once I heard a bunch of seniors challenge one of the guys to ‘have her’ as they so crudely put it. Nasty stuff. I can’t believe she’s the glamorous Laurel St. Pierre.”

“Believe it,” Kate said, patting him on the shoulder. She pecked him on the cheek, then followed Po as she started back down the short flight of deck stairs.

“Where are you two headed now?” P.J. called over the railing. The newspaper flapped in his hand and his voice held a note of anxiety, as if he didn’t really want to hear their answer.

“To see Picasso before he hears this new development on the news,” Po said. “That seems to happen these days with frightening speed.”

***

Picasso was already at the restaurant, his apron tied tightly around the bulge of his stomach. A cast iron frying pan simmered on the stove, filling the room with the smell of onions and garlic and fresh, pungent basil.

“Oh, Picasso, I’m dying,” Kate said, grabbing a hot pad and lifting the lid.

“You must come tonight and dine. I have sea scallops today—pan roasted—and as round and plump as a baby’s cheek.” He walked up beside Kate and stirred the onions with a long wooden spoon while Kate held the lid. “To the sauce I will add bacon and cream, a splash of fine vermouth.” His eyes closed as he envisioned the creamy and robust delicacy that would grace his dinner tables that night.

Po noticed that the terrible anxiety of a few days ago was beginning to disappear, and in its place, a saddened, older Picasso took hold, but the chef’s passion for fine food and the art of cooking was still there, emerging from the folds of his grief. It’s that amazing passion that will pull him through all this ugliness, she thought.

“So why are my two favorite ladies visiting me at this hour?” He put the lid back on the pan and turned the flame down beneath it.

Po ushered him to a small table beneath the window, cluttered with notepaper, pencils and recipe cards. “Let’s sit, Picasso,” she said, and then began in gentle phrases to tell him about the unexpected lineage of Laurel Woods St. Pierre.

Picasso sat still, listening carefully as Po talked. His eyes never left her face and his hands were still on the tabletop. When Po finished he lifted his chin and looked for a long moment out the window. Finally he drew his gaze back and focused again on Kate and Po. “That explains many things,” he said slowly, his eyes shifting from Po to Kate and then back again. “It was Laurel, you know, who wanted to come here to Crestwood. She found the information on this little empty place. ‘Kansas?’ I said to her. ‘Whoever heard of a French bistro in Kansas?’” He forced a smile. “But I loved her, and if she wanted to go to the wheat fields, then I would go. She was so secretive here—she said she knew no one—but she was always looking at people, always asking questions. And sometimes an anger gripped her so mightily, and …” He stared at the table, his pudgy fingers drawing invisible circles on the wood.

“And what, Picasso,” Po prompted.

“That anger, it would come back and attack me. I didn’t mind. Sometimes it left her feeling better, I think, when she could scold me and accuse me of things, and even, once, she called the police to say I was hurting her.” His voice drifted off and he seemed to be reliving moments with his disturbed wife.

Po and Kate sat quietly, remembering the police report.

“I would never have lifted a finger—or even a voice—to cause her a second of pain, you know. But she had these headaches, and I was the one who was there.”

“Did she ever mention her parents, Picasso?”

He shook his head. “Only slightly, only enough that told me her father was a bad man whom she hated. Her mother was a weak woman, but Laurel loved her fiercely. She talked sometimes about her mother’s death—and it always caused headaches and confusion.”

“Confusion?” Kate asked.

“Sometimes she would talk about getting even. She never would talk about why or who—but here in Crestwood she was sometimes rude and awful to good people—like Max Elliott, my friend.”

“Why, Picasso,” Po asked.

“Oh, Po, if only I knew why? She hated Max. I don’t know why. And then she had her … her dalliances. The wine salesman. And another in New York before him. But she didn’t love them, I knew. She loved only me.”

Po reached out and covered his hand with her own. His fingers quieted and his smile returned to his face. “She was complicated, my Laurel.”

On Picasso’s other side, Kate sat still. She knew they had only cracked the surface of who Laurel St. Pierre was, but the pain she caused this sweet man was creating havoc with her emotions.

“I think Laurel came here for a reason, Picasso,” Po said. “And I think when we find that out, we may be closer to who murdered her, and we’ll be able to banish this awful cloud and make you whole again.”

Picasso smiled sadly. He nodded and said softly, “With friends like you, I will be fine.” Then he pushed back his chair and walked across the kitchen to attend his sauce, wondering if a fine baby beet salad with creamy goat chevre, a sprinkling of micro greens, perhaps, would be the perfect accompaniment for his succulent, caramelized scallops. Yes, he thought. It would be an excellent choice.

CHAPTER 20

Phoebe decided a Thursday-night quilt gathering was in order, and e-mailed everyone to meet in Selma’s backroom at 7:30. They needed to check up on the progress of Picasso’s quilt—and on their lives, she wrote.