C
HAPTER
19
I stood in Lucy’s shower for twenty minutes, exhausted and achy, shampooing the filth from my hair and scrubbing until my skin turned pink. Lucy had provided a silky bar of triple-milled French soap smelling like a field of lavender in Provence.
After I dried myself off, I swallowed a Soma. The strong muscle relaxer eases some of my muscle pain and stiffness and makes life bearable. It also gives me a brief, fuzzy high and a feeling of well-being.
The worst time of year for fibromyalgia was winter when the barometer dropped before every rainstorm and cold front. During approximately six months out of the year I relied heavily on all my medications for relief. However, stress could also cause a flare-up of fibro. So even though it was now springtime, a relatively pain free time of year for me, the stress of going to jail drove me straight to my bottle of medicine.
I put on some clean clothes from my hastily packed overnight bag and followed my nose into the kitchen. I’d already decided not to call Quincy and tell her about my ordeal because I didn’t want any of this to get back to my ex. I also decided not to tell Uncle Isaac as he would certainly become upset and worry.
When I was first arrested in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, Uncle Isaac told me, “We’re not a family of Cossacks and thieves. We’re not a family that gets arrested.”
“But, Uncle Isaac, this war is all wrong. We’re sending our young men to die for Southeast Asian oil, pure and simple. Nobody’s fooled. We need to get out of Vietnam and stop this unrighteous war.”
“You’re a good girl, faigela, but a young lady doesn’t get herself arrested. This is going to be on your record for the rest of your life. How will you get a decent job or find a decent husband if you’re a felony?”
“It’s
felon,
Uncle. Felony is the crime, felon is the criminal.”
He threw up both his hands.
“Vey iz mir!”
Lucy and Birdie sat waiting for me at the table. They’d fixed me a breakfast of waffles, fried eggs, turkey sausage, sliced cantaloupe, and coffee.
As soon as she saw me, Birdie jumped up and gave me a long hug. She spoke into my ear while she patted my back. “I’m so sorry, Martha dear. You’re safe now, here with Lucy and Ray.”
Tears stung my eyes. Dear, sweet Birdie.
I sat down and Lucy put a heaping plate in front of me. Just an hour earlier she drove to my place, helped me pack a bag, and drove me back to her house. “Feeling better?”
I gratefully thought about my twenty-minute shower. “I’ll never take hot water for granted again.” I shoveled a hunk of waffle into my mouth. The crispy edges of the little squares dripped with melted butter and sweet maple syrup. I closed my eyes and the food and I became one.
Birdie poured the coffee. “I tried for hours last night, but I just couldn’t come up with a pattern in those quilt names. I’m sorry, Martha.”
“Thanks for trying. Actually, what you did isn’t a complete loss. At least we can now rule out cryptograms and anagrams as part of a hidden message.”
Birdie nodded. “I can’t believe that young detective actually arrested you. What was it like? In jail, I mean.”
I moved on to a bite of juicy sausage. “Pretty awful. Dirty. Vulgar. Disgusting. Smelly and scary.” I stopped for a sip of coffee.
Birdie was a huge fan of crime dramas and mystery novels. She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “You didn’t have to be somebody’s girlfriend, did you, dear?”
Lucy rolled her eyes.
I thought about my confrontation with Blondie. “Well, I did have a near miss with a big, blond biker chick, but everything turned out okay.”
As I devoured my breakfast, I filled them in on everything, beginning with Godwin, Dixie Barcelona, and the baby quilt; meeting Jerry Bell; getting arrested; and ending with Bumper’s disappearance and the knife in my pillow.
Lucy threw her hands in the air. “Why can’t you just make quilts like a normal person?”
“Don’t worry. When I return Claire’s quilts, that’s just what I intend to do. Quilt like a virgin.”
“When the time comes, we’ll help you put your house back together again, won’t we, Birdie?”
“Absolutely!”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, fighting the urge to cry. “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe enough to go back, especially with Claire’s murderer coming after me.” I looked at Lucy and my voice quivered. “I just don’t want to jeopardize you and Ray by staying here.”
“Oh, please.” She waved her hand. “Ray and I are from Wyoming, remember? We own guns and we know how to use them.”
“Wasn’t Dick Cheney from Wyoming?” asked Birdie.
“Right!” I nodded. “And he practically shot a man to death while hunting. Guns can be dangerous.”
Lucy started gathering the dirty dishes. “I rest my case.”
A moment later Lucy answered her telephone. “Just a minute.” She handed the phone to me.
“This is Arlo Beavers.” When did he become “Arlo” and not “Detective”? I could almost smell his cologne through the phone.
“I’m wrapping up here and will be at Mrs. Mondello’s house in about fifteen minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
I stood up and handed the phone back to Lucy. “Detective Beavers is on his way over.”
“Oh, this should be interesting.” Birdie smiled. She exchanged a knowing glance with Lucy.
“What?” I suspected they talked about me while I was in the shower.
Lucy stopped loading the dishwasher and examined me for a full ten seconds. “Your hair is still wet.”
“So?”
Lucy put her hands on her hips. “So, you should dry it.”
“I’m not stupid. I know what you two are doing, and you can stop right now. I’m not interested in him, and he’s not interested in me.”
Lucy put her arm around my shoulders and propelled me down the hallway. “You should still dry your hair, girlfriend. Let me show you where the blower is.”
She shoved me into the guest bathroom and pulled a hair dryer out of one of the vanity drawers. “You’ll feel better if you do this.” She was right, of course; I was just vain enough to want to redeem myself from the sorry sight I was after spending a night in the Van Nuys jail.
For the next five minutes I scrunched my curls with one hand while aiming the dryer with the other. At some point Lucy came back armed with a bottle of perfume, which she sprayed all over me, despite my protests. “Don’t forget lipstick.”
I smoothed my pink T-shirt, adjusted my glasses, and took one last inventory in the mirror. So what if I was a little on the zaftig side. I still had a recognizable waist, curvy hips, and a generous bosom that was 100 percent natural. Some men would find me irresistible. Maybe not in LA, but somewhere on this planet.
When I walked back into the kitchen, Lucy looked me up and down. “Better.” Birdie just smiled.
My face heated when the doorbell rang.
Detective Beavers walked in holding a cat carrier with Bumper inside, and a bulging plastic trash bag.
“Oh, Bumper!” I took the carrier from him.
Lucy raised an eyebrow. “I hope you brought his litter box.”
Beavers smiled at her and pointed to the trash bag. “Also a sack of litter and a bag of kibble I found in the kitchen.”
Lucy took the bundle to her laundry room and came back with a cup of coffee for Beavers, who accepted it gladly.
Bumper purred in my arms, clearly happy to be reunited. “Where was he?”
“I sent a patrolman door to door. Turns out one of your neighbors took him home last night.”
“Who?”
“Spiegelman. Sonia. She insisted she saved him from being blown up by the bombs you kept in your basement.” He looked at me over the rim of his coffee mug. “Would you happen to know what she was talking about?”
I opened my eyes wide and shrugged. “Not a clue. I don’t even have a basement.”
The hot shower, the Soma, and a stomach full of comfort food were working together to finally relax me. My eyelids felt too heavy.
Beavers must have noticed. He stood up and handed his cup to Lucy. “Thanks for the coffee, Mrs. Mondello.”
He turned to me. “CSU will be finished in a few hours. You’ll want to get the bathroom window fixed as soon as they’re done. I also strongly advise you to get a security system. Or a big dog.”
“And a gun.” Lucy pointed her finger at me.
“Only if you know how to use one,” he warned.
Birdie cleared her throat. “Detective, do you have any leads on our missing quilts?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Watson. Not yet.”
My body felt leaden as I walked with him to Lucy’s front door. “Thank you for making the effort to find Bumper. I haven’t forgotten this was supposed to be your day off.”
“Get some sleep.” He opened the door. “You’ve been through a lot.”
I vaguely remembered walking to Lucy’s guest room and putting on my pajamas. I crawled under a lovely Dresden Plate quilt Lucy’s grandmother made using feed sacks she saved during the Depression. Lucy told me her grandmother raised chickens and sold the eggs to help support the family. The chicken feed came in cotton sacks printed with colorful patterns. In those days, nothing was wasted, and the feed sacks were repurposed to make clothing and quilts.
I pulled the quilt up to my chin and turned on my side. Bumper jumped up on the bed and curled into the crook behind my knees. Feeling cozy and safe, I snuggled deeper into the bed and closed my eyes.
The next thing I knew, it was dark outside and the little hand on the bedside clock was pointing to seven. I debated whether to get up and be sociable or just roll over and go back to sleep. Snippets of something I dreamed came floating through my brain behind wisps of gray fog: I stood near a bank of elevators in a crowd of people; Claire was standing in the midst of the crowd holding a needle and thread; the little girl with the thick glasses and the shape sorter box fingered the elevator call button. She turned toward her mother and smiled excitedly. “It’s a rectangle.”
My eyes flew open and I sat straight up in bed. That was it! Oh my God! No longer sleepy, I jumped up and threw on some clothes. I wanted to consult an expert for confirmation, but I was dead certain I was right.
Then it dawned on me. This was Wednesday night and I’d promised Will Terry he’d have the quilts by now.
Darn!
I needed to keep them a little bit longer. Just until I knew for sure. Then I’d give them back.
I turned on my cell phone and discovered several messages from Siobhan Terry.
They probably think I’m a flake
. I called her number.
“Siobhan, this is Martha Rose. Please forgive me for not getting back to you earlier today. I was kind of incapacitated.”
“Thank goodness you called. Are you all right? Will sent a driver to your house earlier to pick up the quilts. The driver reported when he got there he saw crime scene tape and police cars. No one would tell him where you were. I’ve been calling your cell phone for the last several hours. What happened?”
I told her about my arrest, the break-in at my house, and the threatening note. “Detective Beavers says if I’d been home last night, I might have been killed.”
“Mother of God! Where are you now?”
“For the moment I’m staying with my friend Lucy Mondello and her husband, Ray. I was so exhausted from everything that’s happened, I slept the entire day. I just woke up, in fact.”
“I’m so sorry I ever got you into this, and I’m really sorry you were arrested. I was stupid to tell the detective about the computer. If you give me your friend’s address, I’ll have someone come right over and pick up the quilts. You do have them, don’t you?”
“They’re here. Whoever broke in to my house didn’t find them.” By now I was pacing the bedroom. “I’d like to keep them just a little longer—say until noon tomorrow? I need to test a hunch.”
Siobhan’s voice dropped to a whisper and I had to strain to hear her. “Have you found something?”
“Yes, Siobhan, I have. I think I know exactly how Claire sewed her story into her quilts!”
C
HAPTER
20
The pillowcases containing Claire’s quilts sat next to my overnight bag on the floor in the corner of the bedroom. I pulled out one of them at random: Midnight Garden, the one with the navy blue background. No good. The background was too dark to see what I was looking for.
I pulled out another one: Mother’s Asleep, the one with the white cloud background. This one was much easier to examine. I needed an expert to decode what I was looking at, but I was confident I was right.
I took the quilt out of the guest room and went looking for Lucy. Bumper jumped off the bed, followed me out of the bedroom, and made a beeline for the litter box. Lucy sat in the kitchen with a glass of wine reading the newest issue of
Pieces
magazine. She wore a white blouse with a sailor collar, blue capri pants, and red and white striped espadrilles (which kind of matched her hair). Little gold anchors hung from her ears. For a minute I wondered if this was Memorial Day.
When Lucy saw me, she got up, still holding her wineglass, and gave me a one-arm hug. “Hi, hon’. Did you get a good sleep?”
“Not only did I sleep like a log, I had an incredible dream.”
Lucy pointed to an empty chair. “Sit. Ray and I have already eaten, but I saved some dinner for you.”
“Okay, but first I have to . . .”
She took the quilt out of my hand and put it on a chair. “Sit. Before you do anything, you’re going to eat.”
I sat obediently. “Are you sure you’re not Jewish?”
“Italian by marriage. Same thing. If you’re thinking about calling someone to fix your bathroom window, forget about it. Ray is over there now with Joey doing the repairs.”
She poured me a glass of red wine and prepared a steaming plate of meat loaf and gravy, mashed potatoes, and spinach sautéed in garlic and olive oil while she talked.
Suddenly I was famished. “I can’t thank you and Ray enough,” I mumbled through a mouthful of spicy meat loaf, “but I have to go back to my house tonight.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. I have to get a phone number. I think I’ve figured out how Claire sewed her stories into her quilts.”
“Get out! How? When?”
“Well, it actually came to me in a dream. Right now I need to talk to an expert who can read the code.”
“Code?”
“Yes, Lucy. I need to talk to Dixie Barcelona. She’s a Braille expert.”
Lucy looked puzzled for a moment and then her eyes lit up. “I get it! You’re brilliant.” She stood and went for the quilt on the chair. “The code is in the French knots, isn’t it? You think the French knots are Braille.”
I smiled and nodded as Lucy spread out the quilt and fingered the bumps in the background.
Lucy looked closely. “I see what you mean. These knots appear to be clustered in tiny groups and are oriented in even rows. To the casual observer, they’d just look like random embellishment.”
Then Lucy got a funny look on her face. “Do you think the killer is blind?”
“No, of course not. Claire may have confided to the killer what she was doing. The killer wouldn’t have to actually read Braille in order to want to destroy the quilts and the stories they tell.”
“So you think anyone could be the killer?”
“At this point, yes. That’s why I have to find someone who can actually read this stuff. I got voice mail from Dixie Barcelona on my landline last night. I need to play back the message to get her telephone number.”
“Can’t you access your phone remotely?”
“I never learned how.”
“Well, you can’t go home by yourself. I’ll call Ray and make sure he waits for us. I don’t like the idea of our being in your house alone at night.”
“Okay, but let’s hide the quilts before we leave. We can’t be too careful.”
“I’ve got the perfect hiding place.” She picked up some plastic trash bags from under the kitchen sink. “Follow me.”
We gathered the quilts and walked down the hall to Ray’s office. A six-foot-tall cast iron cabinet stood against one wall, painted with shiny black enamel embellished with gold curlicues and a big golden eagle.
It reminded me of an old-fashioned bank vault. “What is this? This thing must weigh a ton.”
“Half a ton, actually. Took six men to install. It’s a gun safe, among other things.” Lucy punched in a digital code and the small red light on the keypad turned green. She rotated a steel handle that looked like the spokes of a wheel and the heavy door swung open. Inside were several rifles neatly lined up, standing vertically on their stocks. Handguns rested on the shelves.
I stared at Lucy. This was a side of the Mondellos I’d never seen. “What is all of this for?”
“You’re looking at Ray’s collection. Kind of an investment. Some of these are antique, some rare, and some for personal use.”
“When would you ever use these guns?”
“Hopefully never, but where we come from, guns are a part of everyday life. Living in Wyoming meant you owned guns for hunting and for protection against predators.”
“Even the two-legged kind?”
“Especially them.”
I peered inside. Several other shelves and drawers were filled with boxes. “What are these for?”
“Some are for ammunition, some for cash and documents, and some for my jewelry. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I think we can stuff these pillowcases between the rifles. First let’s put them in the plastic bags. We don’t want any gun oil to get on the fabric.”
Once the quilts were safely stowed, Lucy closed the heavy door and turned the wheel, locking them safely inside.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay. Let’s get over to my house.”
Lucy called Ray and told him we were coming. Just as she hung up, her phone rang. “Hi, Birdie. Yes, she’s up. I’m taking her back to her house to get something. Listen. Martha discovered the secret of Claire’s quilts!”
Lucy put her hand over the phone. “Birdie’s coming with us. She wants to hear what you found.”
From the backseat of Lucy’s Caddie, I explained everything to Birdie.
“And the answer came to you in a dream?”
“Yes.”
“Ah . . .” She tapped her head. “The little gray cells. They never rest,
n’est-ce pas
?”
We laughed.
When I opened my front door, Ray Mondello was waiting for us in his flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Ray was a few inches shorter than Lucy. At sixty-six years old, he still had a full head of dark, straight hair. He smiled at me and winked, as if to say, “I’ve got your back.”
I looked around and, even though I’d already seen the destruction, I was still shocked by the mess the killer made of my house. I walked over to Ray and he wrapped me in a big hug.
“How’s my girl?” He patted my back. Good old Ray. Heart of gold and utterly dependable. “I hope you don’t plan to stay here tonight.”
“No. I just came to listen to my messages, then I’m going to drive myself back to your house.”
“That’s my girl.”
I carefully picked my way through the debris in the kitchen. The floor was filled with breakable items that had shattered when they hit the hard brown ceramic tiles. Ray located my broom and began to sweep up the mess. I found my phone upside down on a pile of what used to be my white coffee and tea canisters. I picked up the handset lying nearby and miraculously heard a dial tone.
I pulled my notepad and a pen from my purse and replayed Dixie’s message, writing down her number.
While Ray swept, Lucy and Birdie drifted into the living room. They replaced the cushions on the sofa and picked up the books that the killer pushed out of the bookcases.
Then Joey walked into the living room. He was the only one of Lucy’s five boys with light hair and blue eyes. The others all got Ray’s dark hair and eyes. “Hi, everyone.” Joey turned to his father. “I finished the window, Pops.”
“Okay. We’re outta here.”
They waited for me while I picked up some clothes for the wake and funeral. As we walked to the front door, I hugged Joey. “Thank you so much for your help.”
Joey was the only one of Lucy’s boys who didn’t finish college. Like his father, Joey was most comfortable working with his hands. By the time he was twenty, he was a licensed carpenter, and by twenty-five he owned his own contracting business.
“A piece of cake, Aunt Martha, but it sucks this happened to you. Dad and I agreed I’m gonna install an alarm system so you’ll be safer. I’ll have you hooked up by Friday.”
Joey brushed off my offer to pay. “You’re family.”
I drove my car back to Lucy’s. On the way, I punched in Dixie’s number on my cell phone. I got her voice mail. “Dixie, this is Martha Rose. I really need to talk to you right away. I think I’ve figured out something about Claire’s quilts, but I need an expert’s help. This is urgent because I have to give the quilts back to the Terrys by noon tomorrow. I’m staying with friends at the moment, so please call me on my cell.”
I gave her the number and then hung up. Now I just hoped she’d get the message before I returned the quilts tomorrow. While there was still a chance, I wanted to find out what secrets were hidden in the Braille—secrets terrible enough to kill for.