C
HAPTER
2
“See if you can open the door.” I stared at the body on the floor.
Lucy turned the knob, but the door was locked. She rushed over to the window. “Let me see.”
Birdie came over, too, mashing her nose against the glass. “Good heavens. Is that Claire?”
I was about to pull my cell phone out of my bag to call 9-1-1 when a slender blonde in a red halter top and white shorts came out of the house next-door. She was carrying gardening shears. I hurried over to her yard and asked, “Do you know the woman who lives here? Claire Terry?”
“Of course. Why?”
“I think something has happened to her.”
“Wha’?”
“Nobody answered the doorbell, so I peeked in the window. Someone is lying on the floor.”
“Oh my God. I know where she keeps a spare key.” She threw down the gardening shears and ran over to the corner of Claire’s house, reached through a locked wrought iron gate, and took a key from somewhere on the side of the house. Then she sprinted like an athlete to the front door and opened the lock while I power walked right behind her.
She stuck her head inside the door. “Claire?” No answer.
“Over there.” Birdie pointed to the red shoes.
We rushed forward and stopped suddenly at the sight of Claire Terry, lying on her back with a ring of dried yellow vomit around her mouth.
The blonde gasped. The whites of her eyes showed, and the skin of her face turned green. Her voice, small and high pitched, squeaked, “Is she dead?”
Claire lay on her back with one arm at her side and the other resting on her stomach. She wore a red cotton sundress and those red shoes. Faint freckles dotted her pale pretty face, turned slightly to the right, and her eyes stared vacantly at the wall. Her long dark hair spread out behind her head in a tangled fan. Under her right cheek her hair was crusted with vomit. She looked like a delicate porcelain doll discarded by a careless child.
I got on my knees and put my fingertips on her neck. Her flesh felt cold and wooden, and she smelled sour. I shuddered and felt light-headed. Tiny polka dots danced before my eyes and I thought I might faint. I blinked rapidly, took a deep breath, and quickly pulled my hand away. “No pulse.”
Birdie clutched Lucy’s arm. “Oh dear. What about CPR?”
The blonde looked at the vomit on Claire’s face. “You don’t mean mouth to mouth. . . .”
Lucy pointed. “Look at her eyes. People don’t sleep with their eyes wide open unless they’re dead.”
She was right. This pretty young woman was gone. Pity squeezed my heart.
Birdie’s voice hovered on the edge of hysteria. “Well, put a mirror under her nose. Does anyone have a mirror in their purse?”
I looked at Birdie and shook my head. “We’re too late, Birdie. She’s gone.”
Lucy put her arm around Birdie’s shoulders. “Come on, hon’. Let’s go outside and wait while Martha calls nine-one-one.”
I reached over and pushed her eyelids closed. Then I got on all fours, grunted, and stood up butt first; there was no other graceful way to do it. Being overweight was such a bummer.
I pulled my cell phone out of my tote bag and dialed 9-1-1. One recent TV muckraker reported the emergency lines in Los Angeles were often so busy a person could wait several minutes to get through. This must have been one of those times.
How long would Claire have lain there if we hadn’t come along? Who would have been the first to discover her?
How awful to end your life alone.
I thought about how I wanted to die: in my own bed, surrounded by sobbing family and friends. My ex-husband, Aaron, would grab my hand and tell me tearfully, “I was so wrong to leave you. I was a total jerk. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. Can you ever forgive me?”
Tears stung my eyes as the poignant scene played out in my head. I’d look at him and whisper with my dying breath, “It’s too late, moron.”
Then a voice came on the line. “Nine-one-one Emergency.”
“I want to report a death.”
“What’s the address?”
I turned to Claire’s neighbor for the information. The dispatcher instructed us to go outside and wait for the police.
The blonde stood transfixed, staring at Claire’s body. The way she ran, I thought she was much younger. I was envious of her slender thighs and the way her shorts didn’t ride up at the crotch, like mine would if I owned a pair—which I didn’t. I couldn’t wear shorts because of my ample thighs. The skin of her cheeks was unnaturally tight and tugged a teensy bit at the corners of her mouth. I estimated she was closer to my age than Claire’s.
I would bet my new microwave her perky boobs were one hundred percent saline. If I put my large breasts inside a halter top, they’d fall to my waist.
Los Angeles was full of women like Claire’s neighbor—hovering around menopause and desperate to hang on to their lost youth. Women who still wanted to be seen.
“My name’s Martha. Martha Rose.” I touched her arm, attempting to snap her out of her trance.
She looked at me with tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m Ingrid. Claire and I weren’t just neighbors, we were friends. I can’t believe she’s dead.”
“Come on.” I took her arm and gently led her away. “Let’s go outside with the others and wait for the police.”
Ingrid sniffed and came with me.
Lucy patted Birdie’s hand as they sat on a painted wooden bench outside the front door. Birdie dabbed her eyes with a tissue and kept muttering, “Poor, poor Claire.”
I introduced Ingrid to my friends and she smiled politely. The muscles in her face barely moved.
“We have to wait for the police.”
We sat on the porch steps. Ingrid put her forehead in her hands and cried softly. “What do you think happened?”
“Well, she could have had a seizure or a stroke or even a heart attack,” I said.
Ingrid looked ready to puke.
I edged away a little. “Are you okay?”
She stood up. “I’m feeling woozy. I’ve gotta go home.” She staggered back through her yard and disappeared inside her house.
Lucy sighed. “If I were a drinker, I’d be going for a stiff one right about now.”
Birdie nodded. “I wouldn’t blame you. I could use a nice stiff cup of tea myself.”
A couple minutes later the sirens announced the arrival of the EMTs with an ambulance; right behind them were the police and a fire truck. Uniformed officers secured the house and told us to stay put.
Twenty minutes later a silver Camry arrived and parked on the street. A tall man got out, put on a gray suit jacket, and ducked under the yellow tape stretched across the driveway. A shorter man got out of the passenger side and followed behind him.
The tall one was about my age, only in much better shape. He had a shock of gray hair and a white mustache.
Be still my beating heart.
There were two things in a man I was a sucker for: foreign accents and neat facial hair.
He stopped briefly and nodded at us. “Ladies.” Then he disappeared inside the house with his much younger partner.
Ten minutes later they came back outside. “I’m Detective Arlo Beavers with the LAPD.” The tall one handed each of us a business card. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”
His dark eyes looked at me and I morphed into a silly, simpering bowl of vanilla pudding. Heck. I hated when that happened. I didn’t feel out of control very often; I was a natural leader. Treasurer of our quilt guild. Retired UCLA administrator. Now my self-assurance slowly slipped away.
How did we know Claire? When did we arrive? How did we get in the house? Where did we go once we were in the house? Did we touch the body? Did we see anyone else? Where is the neighbor now? During the interview, he sent his partner to question Ingrid. I spilled my guts. By the end of the interview, Detective Beavers knew every single detail we knew about Claire. I even dished the dirt on the rumors surrounding her divorce. Rumors I had kept from my best friends. I had no shame.
When he was done, he smiled. “Thank you for your cooperation. You’re free to go. If you think of anything else, call me.”
Was it just my imagination, or was he looking at me again? All of a sudden, I had the pulse rate of a hummingbird and a hot flash was coming on.
Lucy drove away slowly from Claire’s house, carefully steering the huge Caddy around the police cars parked on the street. She narrowly missed hitting the coroner’s van coming toward us.
Once Lucy hit Canoga Avenue, she squeezed the steering wheel and sped up, exceeding the speed limit by a good ten miles per hour. “I
told
you I had a bad feeling.”
Birdie clutched the grab bar. “I wonder how she died. All that vomit . . . Maybe she had a seizure. Do you know if she was epileptic?”
“What would account for the blood?” I wondered aloud.
“What blood?”
I glanced at Detective Beavers’s card, still in my hand. The word
Homicide
jumped out at me. “You didn’t see? Claire had blood on her hands.”
That evening I called Quincy, my daughter who lived in Boston. She fell in love with the East Coast while attending Brown University and decided to settle there, working in the newsroom of WGBH Boston, a National Public Radio station.
“Hey, Mom, how are you?”
“Quincy honey. I had a terrible day. I found a dead body.”
“Shut the front door!”
“Really, honey.” I told her about Claire Terry.
“How awful. Are you okay? How about Aunt Lucy and Aunt Birdie? What did the police say? How did she die?” That was my Quincy. Always curious, always asking questions, ever the reporter.
I was proud of my daughter and missed her. Named after the father I never knew, she was my only child and the only good thing to come out of my marriage to Aaron Rose. I hoped she’d move back to California one day but kept those thoughts to myself. Quincy was fiercely independent, and if she suspected I was trying to push her into something, she’d go out of her way to do the opposite.
I answered her questions the best I could.
“Well, go get a glass of wine and relax, Mom. You deserve it after such a shock. Wish I was there to give you a hug.”
As I pushed the off button, I felt my neck muscles tighten, a familiar and unwanted response to stress that usually led to a migraine. If I didn’t do something about it immediately, I knew from experience the pain would worsen until I had a full body migraine. Instead of a glass of wine, I took a Soma, a muscle relaxer that was my go-to medication for the fibromyalgia that plagued me.
C
HAPTER
3
Four days after finding Claire’s body, we were back in Lucy’s Caddy driving to the annual show of the West San Fernando Valley Quilt Guild. Lucy took her hand off the wheel to show us the bracelet she wore. “Look. My sweetie felt so bad about Tuesday he went out and bought this for me.”
That was some serious bling. Diamonds mixed with something else. “What kind of stones are those?”
“Pink sapphires.”
Ray’s generosity didn’t surprise me. At the birth of each of their sons, he gave Lucy a piece of good jewelry. The more successful his business grew, the bigger the gemstones. When Lucy wanted to remodel their house, he set up a separate bank account to cover expenses and never questioned her. What a guy.
“Lovely.” Birdie’s voice sounded wistful. Long ago she confided her husband, Russell, kept tax returns dating back to when they first married and still made her hand over the grocery receipts. I couldn’t remember Birdie ever showing us anything Russell gave her.
Once she told us he tried to force her to stop buying fabric for her quilts. “There’s enough material in this house to last a lifetime.” Without saying a word, Birdie went into their bedroom with a pair of scissors and cut squares out of his best shirts. After that she bought fabric whenever she wanted to.
Lucy looked at me in the rearview mirror. “How’re you doing, Martha?”
“Oh, I think I’m over the shock, but the whole thing still creeps me out.”
I didn’t have a husband at home to comfort me like they did. Aaron left me long ago for the wife of one of his psychiatrist colleagues. All I had now was Quincy and my elderly Uncle Isaac, and I didn’t want to burden either of them. So, for the past few days, I’d turned to wasabi rice crackers with crumbled Gorgonzola cheese for consolation. Plus lots of chocolate. “I’ve been getting phone calls from guild members curious to know the gory details about finding Claire’s body.”
Lucy nodded. “Me too. You know Carlotta Hudson? The one who keeps trying to enter her quilts in Houston International and always gets rejected?”
“Sure. She once came to a board meeting and complained that having the same person always win first prize was unfair. She asked if there was some way the rest of the quilts could be judged apart from Claire’s.”
“Well, she had the nerve to ask me if I thought Claire suffered.”
“Good heavens. What did you tell her?” Birdie asked.
“I told her she reminded me of a crow pecking at roadkill.”
We laughed.
Birdie played with the end of her long braid. “Do you think they’ll give Claire first prize again this year?”
“Are you kidding?” my voice rose. “She sold her last quilt for ten thousand dollars. During an emergency meeting two nights ago, the board decided to dedicate the show to her. I heard when the show opened yesterday, there was a huge line waiting to view her quilt.”
Birdie looked surprised. “Can they give a prize to a dead person?”
“We’re about to find out. The judges pinned the ribbons on the winning quilts last night after the show.”
Lucy flipped on the turn signal. “Well, I hate to say this ’cause it really sounds awful, but if they give her a prize, this’ll be the last time. From now on, Carlotta may have the chance she’s been looking for.”
I smiled. You had to love Lucy’s honesty.
We pulled into the parking lot of the Woodland Hills Marriott and found a space using Birdie’s blue handicapped placard.
I got out of the car and snapped on my fanny pack with two quilt show essentials inside—my digital camera and my wallet. Dozens of vendors would be selling everything from sewing machines to antique buttons, and a quilter had to be prepared.
Then I bent down and helped Birdie out of the car. “I can’t wait to find out if your wall hanging won. It’s your best quilt yet.”
Lucy locked the car. “Who were the judges this year?” She slung her pink bag over her shoulder and adjusted her pink pantsuit. You had to admire her. Lucy’s outfit matched her new bracelet.
“The usual. The group of ladies from Glendale.”
Our guild traded judging duties every year with the Glendale guild. In an effort to keep the procedure honest and impersonal, the judges weren’t allowed to know the names of the quilters until the process was over.
In deference to Birdie’s knees, we maneuvered our way slowly through the hotel lobby toward the grand ballroom where the quilts were displayed. A hundred other quilters were trying to do the same thing. Vendor tables lining the walls created a bottleneck as women stopped to browse.
As we progressed, I sometimes glimpsed women quickly turning their heads away and whispering to each other. Was it my imagination or were they talking about us?
Carlotta Hudson made a beeline toward us with a smirk. My heart sank. Any conversation with Carlotta usually began with a complaint and ended in a thinly veiled insult.
Carlotta was tall, but not as tall as Lucy. Her short mousy brown hair was streaked with gray and her bangs hung in her face in limp strings. A red exhibitor ribbon was pinned on the collar of a blouse she’d sewn from a lavender and yellow floral fabric.
Carlotta looked smug. Not a good sign. “Well, well.” She peered at us through glasses with lavender plastic frames. “The three amigas. Be sure to check out the winning quilts at the back of the ballroom.” She put a look of mock sympathy on her face and turned to Lucy. “I’m afraid, however, yours isn’t among them.”
What a witch. We had never been able to figure out what Carlotta had against Lucy.
Then she turned to look at Birdie. “I received a third-place ribbon today. It’s the fourth ribbon I’ve gotten in the last five years.”
Like anybody cared.
Lucy’s eyes flickered. She shifted position, forcing Carlotta to look at her. “I don’t quilt for recognition. I quilt for family.” Then Lucy turned to Birdie. “How many times have you applied to the International Quilt Show in Houston? You know, the one where the
best quilters
from all over the world get to show their quilts?”
“Two times.”
“How many times have you been accepted?”
“Twice.”
Carlotta glared at Lucy, red creeping up her cheeks. She picked angrily at a gauze bandage wrapped around her arm.
“Did you win any ribbons?”
“Once.” Birdie picked up her braid and looked nervously at the now-livid Carlotta.
Lucy turned back to Carlotta. “Congratulations on winning another
third place,
Carlotta. Maybe we’ll see you in Houston one of these years.”
Carlotta stormed away.
Lucy smiled and shook her head slowly. “That was way too easy.”
We continued to make our way past hundreds of people to the winning quilts at the back of the ballroom. Claire’s latest wall hanging was certain to be there, and we all hoped Birdie’s would be right beside hers.