Make Quilts Not War (10 page)

“They call them senior living,” Lauren added with a smirk.

“Jenny didn’t say anything about having escaped a cult,” Mavis cautioned, ignoring Lauren. “Let’s not borrow trouble.”

“But there is something she’d not telling us,” Connie countered. “Maybe she
did
escape a cult.”

“I’ll see what I can find out about the commune in Georgeville, Minnesota,” Lauren said. “Assuming she was telling the truth about it.”

“Anyone want another brownie?” Harriet asked and held up the plate.

Everyone did.

Harriet could hear the pounding of her heart over the roar of the sandstorm. She was crouched behind a dried clump of sagebrush, watching the shadowy form coming ever closer. He wasn’t large, but the knife in his hand was.

The chorus of an old song floated on the night air; something about not having seen anything yet. She felt sweat trickle down her back. The sweat felt like sandpaper against her skin…

And then the desert disappeared, and the sandpaper turned into Fred’s tongue.

“Get away,” she said and pushed him from her back, pulling her sleep shirt down as she did. Fred slapped Scooter as he slid past, causing the little dog to yelp in protest. She glanced at the clock on her bedside stand.

“You guys need to learn to sleep in a little,” she complained. “There is no reason for any of us to be up at six-thirty in the morning.”

Scooter whined, his indication that he wanted to go outside to do his business. Something he probably could have waited another two hours for if it hadn’t been for Fred.

“Arghhh,” Harriet said and rolled out of bed to start her day.

“You two behave yourselves,” Harriet instructed her pets an hour later.

She’d walked Scooter, fed both him and Fred, and taken her shower. Now,
she clicked the pet gate across the opening from the kitchen to
the
hallway that led to the stairs. She shut the door into the dining room; she was thankful her Victorian house was old
enough to have doors between almost all of its rooms, making dog management easier.

“Uncle Rod is going to come by and walk you at lunchtime,” she told the little dog as she laced her black hiking boots over her black tights. She had on a floor-length skirt she’d made from an old crazy quilt that had been irreparably damaged years before. “And I’ll see you later on.”

Connie’s husband Rod had volunteered to provide dog-walking services for the duration of the festival and quilt show for the rescue dogs several of the Loose Threads had adopted the previous fall.

Harriet planned to stop by her favorite coffee shop for a cup of hot chocolate and a muffin before continuing on to the quilt show. She needed some time to think, and she wasn’t due at the festival for two hours.

The Steaming Cup Coffee Shop provided several seating options. Harriet was carrying her cocoa and muffin toward one of the
overstuffed chairs in front of a glass-fronted artificial fireplace
when she glanced at the long table that had a bookcase with embedded power strips running down its center. She changed her mind and headed for one of the chairs at the computer table.

Most mornings, Lauren could be found here, her laptop con
nected to the power. With any luck, she’d show up before Harriet finished her breakfast and have some results from her background check on Jenny. She had no doubt Lauren had done her search as soon as she’d gotten home the night before.

Harriet was staring into her nearly empty cup when Tom Bainbridge stopped at the chair opposite hers.

“This seat taken?”

“No, sit, please.”

“You here by yourself?”

“The kids woke me up early this morning, and with everything
that happened yesterday, there was no hope of going back to
sleep.”

“The kids?” He raised his left eyebrow.

“My cat and dog. They’re running my life these days.”

Tom sat down, smiling and shaking his head.

“You laugh, but that’s just because you don’t have any pets.”

“Not true,” he said. “I have a quite elderly cat, but he’s very independent. As long as his food is in his dish on time, he’s happy. When you come visit me, I’ll introduce you.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Harriet said and took a sip of her cocoa.

“I heard there’s been a shooting. Was it someone you knew?”
Tom broke off a piece of his blueberry scone and popped it into
his mouth.

“Not exactly,” Harriet said, and then explained Jenny’s connection to the victim.

“She must be shaken up,”

“She’s shocked that the person who replaced her got shot right after she left for her first break, but her reaction was a little weird, and then she revealed she’d been raised in a commune and had been lying about it for all these years. I’m not sure why she felt the need to lie to the group, other than being embarrassed about her lack of traditional education.”

“Interesting she chose now to come clean. You never know—”

Harriet never found out what wisdom was to follow.

“You didn’t let my chair get cold, I see.” Aiden towered over her,
his hands on his hips, fire blazing in his ice-blue eyes. “I thought
you said you were going to back off,” he said to Tom and then turned
back to Harriet. “You didn’t even give me a chance to explain.
What? You called him to take my place without any discussion? You’re so insecure you can’t be by yourself for a couple of days while I deal with an emergency?”

Harriet could feel her face burning. She clutched the edge of the table, speechless.

“Sorry I’m late,” Lauren said and put her arms loosely around Tom’s neck. Tom stood and swept Lauren into his arms, dipping her slightly and kissing her.

“No problem,” he said when he’d finished. He kept his arm
around Lauren’s shoulders. “You want your usual?” He headed for the coffee bar.

“Have you been struck dumb?” Michelle asked Aiden as she
joined the group. He’d frozen when Lauren came in and hadn’t moved or spoken since. No one had noticed his sister come up beside him.

Michelle grabbed his arm and half-dragged him to the upholstered chairs.

“I need to know…” She continued talking at Aiden until they were out of earshot.

“I hate that woman,” Lauren said and sat down in the chair next to Tom’s.

“I hope your regular is a vanilla latte with two shots,” Tom said when he came back to the table, a coffee cup in one hand and a bag with an orange-cranberry muffin in the other.

“Thanks, that works. Can I pay you for it?”

Tom waved her off.

“That was well worth the price,” he said.

“You two are good,” Harriet said. “Or maybe I should say
bad.”

“I can sympathize with a guy being mixed-up about how he feels,” Tom continued. “And I can even understand having a difficult family, but there is no excuse for bad behavior. He’s lucky all I
did was help Lauren scam him. Next time, I might have to give
him an attitude adjustment.”

“I appreciate your help, but I can deal with Aiden,” Harriet
said.

“Come on, admit it,” Lauren said with a wicked smile. “Didn’t you enjoy that just a little?”

She smiled. “I did.”

“My report is going to be anticlimactic after all this,” Lauren went on. She pulled her laptop from her canvas messenger bag and plugged its power cord in. “Jenny is the invisible woman. She has nothing on the Internet, and I mean nothing. You have to work really hard to have that low of a profile.

“Of course, ‘Jenny’ might not be her legal name. Her husband’s name is on everything I can find—tax rolls, car registration, ad
dress and phones. She must have a driver’s license with her legal
name on it, but unless we can figure out what that is, it’s a dead end. And
before you ask, I checked the obvious possibilities—Jennifer,
Jeanette, Janelle, everything I could think of, but no dice.”

“Thanks for trying,” Harriet said.

“I’m not through here.”

“Sorry. Continue, please.”

“I also checked out that commune. As she reported, it was
founded in the late nineteen-sixties by a couple of liberal ex-university professors. I can’t find anything to indicate it has any cult ties, so at least that’s good. They were more successful at truck farming than the local community expected—nothing too exciting. An exhibit has been created around them and is traveling to several museums around the country. That’s new. Even if someone saw her picture in the exhibit, I can’t imagine why that would be a problem, I mean, they would have to have been there themselves to know her from the commune, so what would the big deal be?”

“There’s something wrong about Jenny’s whole story,” Harriet said. “I’m not sure the commune explains why she was so antsy about doing this event, but it definitely doesn’t explain why she’s so sure she was the real target of the shooting or why she was so frantic to check out her quilt afterward.”

Her cell phone rang, and from the ringtone, she knew it was her aunt.

“I’m at the coffee shop with Lauren and Tom,” she said after they had exchanged greetings. “I’d be happy to pick up more tortillas at Jorge’s on my way to the festival.”

She listened to her aunt’s instructions about where to find the tortillas Jorge needed and told her to give Jorge’s cook fifteen or twenty minutes to get them packed before she went to Tico’s Tacos.

“Did Lauren have any news?” Aunt Beth asked.

Harriet relayed what Lauren had reported and rang off.

“I’m going to have a cup of tea,” she announced. “I have to
wait on a box at Jorge’s.”

She got up and went to the coffee bar to place her order. She
could feel Aiden staring at her as she crossed the room. She
glanced his way, and he quickly averted his gaze.

“Just who I wanted to talk to,” Detective Jane Morse said from
behind her in line; Harriet hadn’t seen her come in. “Officer
Nguyen mentioned you were hanging around the crime scene when he arrived. Please tell me that was a coincidence.

“You were involved,” she continued when Harriet didn’t speak.
She looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t need any complications,
please.”

“Lauren and I were there,” Harriet explained, “but not when the shooting happened. Our friend Jenny made the quilt that was hanging on the stage where the woman was killed. I know it sounds shallow, but I think our friend wanted to see if her quilt had been damaged.”

“Jenny Logan,” Morse said, looking at the small notebook she’d pulled from her pocket. “She’s your Jenny? Jenny from the Loose Threads?”

“Yes, our Jenny.”

“I need to talk to her, too. Do you know where she is?”

“Probably at home. She’ll be back at the festival today. Assuming your guys are letting people go back in.”

“We had people working all night to clear the scene so we
wouldn’t interfere with the festival. It’s our community, too, you know.”

“I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Harriet said.

“I know,” Morse said and rubbed her hand over her face. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired.”

“Can you join us for a few minutes,” Harriet asked her when she’d ordered her tea.

“Sure, let me get my coffee.”

“You know I can’t tell you anything,” Morse said when she’d taken a seat at the computer table. “But if you guys have any ideas, I’m all ears, particularly if you know anything about the victim.”

“So far, none of the Threads knows her except in passing,” Harriet said.

“I did a little checking on the Internet,” Lauren volunteered. “I was curious,” she added.

“And?” Morse prompted.

“It appears Pamela Gilbert was going through a contentious divorce,” Lauren said. “You probably already know she had a restraining order against her husband and some woman.”

“I didn’t know that yet, and I’m wondering how you do.”

“Some of my clients deal with security issues—criminal background checks, workplace security and monitoring—so I have to be current on what information can be accessed and how to do that,” Lauren replied. “It’s all legal.”