Four-Patch of Trouble (24 page)

I peered through the glass door and saw Alyse puttering around the public area of the shop, dusting and rearranging the displays. Not the thief/killer then, unless Alyse had killed her partner.

I hadn't expected to be able to talk to Alyse again until the shop reopened next week, and I didn't want to miss this opportunity. Monograms' front door was locked, so I knocked on the glass.

Alyse looked up, recognized me, and hurried over to the door. She rubbed her face as she walked. Up close, I could see that Alyse's eyes were red and puffy, and her cheeks were damp.

Alyse twisted the key in the deadbolt and pushed the door open to let me inside.

"I didn't expect to see you here," I said. "Did something else happen?"

"Oh, goodness, no," Alyse said. "I couldn't just sit at home. I had to keep busy. Tremain's final arrangements are all set now, and there's nothing for me to do except wait until the service on Saturday. I thought working might distract me, but I keep thinking I need to ask Randall about something, and then I remember that I can't ask him. Not ever again. He really was a brilliant salesman. I don't know what I'm going to do without him."

I'd had plenty of teary clients in my office over the years—sometimes tears of joy in the aftermath of winning a hard-fought trial, sometimes tears of frustration over an adverse technical ruling, sometimes tears of pain or loss—and I'd never been any good at dealing with their emotions. Some of the clients had been grateful for my no-nonsense approach, and the rest I had fobbed off onto colleagues who were better at handholding while I silently gave thanks I wasn't a solo practitioner. I was on my own now since I hadn't anticipated needing that kind of backup for appraisal work.

I settled for an awkward, "I'm sorry."

Alyse nodded and turned away. "I appreciate your checking on me."

"I was in the neighborhood." I was as much of a fraud as Tremain ever was. I wasn't here to help Alyse but to get information out of her that might possibly lead to her being charged with murder.

Alyse dropped into the wingback chair next to the cupboard full of quilts. "I don't deserve your friendship. I haven't been honest with you."

One of the cardinal rules for interrogating a hostile witness was to never, ever interrupt when the person volunteered information, since it was often something the interrogator wouldn't have thought to ask about. I settled into the matching chair to Alyse's right and waited for her to go on.

"I knew he was selling fakes," she said between sobs. "I figured it out two months ago, and I've been making plans to dissolve our partnership ever since."

"How did Tremain take the news?"

"The tantrum went on for over an hour. I thought he was going to have a stroke. At one point I even thought it might be a blessing if he did. I'm not proud of the thought, but you saw what he was like."

"Even a saint would have had that thought after an hour of a grown man's temper tantrum," I assured her. "You would have done the right thing if he'd actually needed medical care."

Alyse nodded. "I just wanted to dissolve our relationship before Tremain's cons caught up with him. I was almost out too. Just one more month, and I was going to be free."

"He let you out of your partnership?"

"He didn't have any choice." She laughed through her tears. "Ironically, Randall was the one who insisted on a written partnership agreement, and he wrote it himself. There was an escape clause with sixty days' notice, no reason necessary. I think he put it in there to protect himself, and he never considered the possibility that I might want out of the deal. I gave him notice a month ago. Just one more month, and I'd have had my new place set up so my reputation wouldn't be destroyed when the truth came out about Tremain."

"And instead, you're cleaning up the mess he left behind."

"I was such a fool," Alyse said, echoing the words of Tremain's other confirmed victim, Martha McDowell.

"Anyone can get conned by a professional."

Alyse was starting to look more angry than despairing. She pulled her silver cigarette case out of her pocket. "If you'll excuse me, I need a smoke."

"Of course. I should be going anyway."

Alyse hesitated. "You know, it's tempting to just have my smoke inside here—it's my shop now, after all—but I can't make myself do it. Randall may not have cared about his textiles, and they're not worth anything close to what's on the price tags, but it wouldn't be right to damage them with the smoke. Someone worked hard to make them. They deserve some respect."

"I'm glad you care. I've seen what even small amounts of smoke can do to a quilt over time."

"I don't know why I bother, really," Alyse said. "Someone will probably just steal the rest of them like they did with the four-patch."

"Have you heard anything more about it from the police?"

She tapped her cigarette case on the palm of her hand. "Not from them and not from the insurance company either. I'm afraid Randall may have lied about getting an insurance policy, along with all the other lies." The tapping of her cigarette case increased in tempo. "Why couldn't he have waited another month to get himself killed?"

I left Alyse to her cigarette break, but before I could cross the street to talk to Stefan, I got a call from Matt.

"I've got a lead," he said. "Where are you?"

"Outside Monograms."

"Perfect. I'll meet you at the museum in ten minutes. There's someone we need to talk to, but she won't be there for long."

Ten minutes was just enough time to get to the museum. Talking to Stefan would have to wait, yet again. I was going to feel like a total idiot later if it turned out that Stefan had, in fact, killed Tremain and I'd missed all these opportunities to get him to confess.

Matt's battered old truck was parked in front of the museum. Inside, the woman at the ticket desk recognized me and sent me upstairs to Gil's office.

Matt was slouched in one of the visitor chairs inside the private office, but instead of the statuesque, dark-skinned, and cheerful Gil behind the desk, there was a petite, blonde, and irritated woman. I had to remind myself that the rude woman was Gil's only ally on the board of directors.

Matt stood. "This is Keely Fairchild. She's an appraiser. And Keely, this is Nancy Grant."

"We've met in passing." I sat on the edge of the remaining chair.

"Are you keeping me here about an appraisal?" Nancy asked Matt. "I thought you wanted to do an interview of some sort. I'm running late for an important meeting with the rest of the board."

I didn't want to be here any more than Nancy Grant did, but Matt seemed to have something in mind. He'd said that people tended to underestimate him, and I didn't want to make the same mistake.

"I would never waste your time with something as trivial as a five-figure valuation of a museum acquisition," Matt said smoothly. "Instead, I had a few questions about your husband and his colleagues."

Nancy smiled, although it didn't register beyond her lips. "My husband is a great man. I'm always happy to talk about him."

"Nancy's married to an extremely popular legislator," Matt explained to me. "He knows pretty much everyone in the state government. I'm guessing you know them too."

"I do my best to know my husband's friends." The surface humility failed to cover her smugness.

"And they all know you and your work here at the museum," he said. "I bet they would come to you if they had a question about antiques."

"Of course."

He handed her his smartphone. "Have any of these people asked you about quilts recently?"

Nancy shook her head without glancing at the screen. She put her hands flat on the desk, preparing to stand. "I don't have time for this."

"From what I've read, you do have an incredibly busy schedule," Matt said. "Not just here but also standing in at community events for your husband."

Nancy relaxed her hands. "I probably put in more miles driving from one end of this district to the other than he does. Every single afternoon this week I've attended at least one event for him. Monday's was the craziest. I went straight from here to the opposite end of the district to attend a memorial service. It was an honor to be there, of course, but it took four hours, including the commute."

"I promise this won't take four hours," Matt said, giving her a smile that looked fake to me but that Nancy seemed mesmerized by.

Nancy tore her gaze from Matt's face and scrolled down the list, shaking her head. "I know a lot of these people, but the only time we've discussed anything about the museum was when I encouraged them to make a donation."

"Thanks anyway." Matt took his phone back, disappointment obvious on his face. "What about Randall Tremain? What do you know about him?"

The hands on the desk tensed again. "He's a local antiques dealer, known for his impeccable eye for antique quilts."

"That's not what I've heard," Matt said. "Keely tells me his eye was considerably less than impeccable."

Even Matt's smile couldn't distract Nancy this time. "She's wrong."

"So you've seen his inventory?" Matt asked.

"Not personally."

"Why not? I would think that with your role on the museum's board, you'd have a personal interest in the local antique shops."

"I let the museum do most of the collecting. I have a few nice quilts myself, but I bought them in New York. Not from Tremain. I've never even met the man."

"I'd love to see your collection sometime." He sounded as genuine and eager as he'd been when he'd tried to wrangle a tour of my bank vault. Either he'd been faking it both times, or he truly wanted to see Nancy's quilt. Which was odd, since he didn't seem to know much about antique quilts.

Nancy stood, her head rising barely higher than it had been while seated on the chair that usually accommodated Gil's long legs. "I really need to get to the board meeting. They can't start without me."

A collector who didn't want to show off her collection struck me as odd. Now I wanted to see Nancy's quilts too. I dug into my messenger bag for a business card. "If you ever need your quilts appraised, you can call me."

Nancy ignored the offered card. "I'd never buy something that valuable without having it appraised first. My husband is a wealthy man, but I would never waste his money."

Was Nancy always this abrasive with her husband's constituents, or had we just caught her on a bad week? I dropped the card on Gil's desk.

Matt stood. "Thanks for seeing us."

"Always happy to speak to the press." This time, it was obvious that Nancy's smile was fake. She was halfway around the desk before adding as an afterthought, "We're always happy to speak to local businesswomen too."

"Of course," I said, although Nancy was already out of earshot, the rapid tapping of her high heels echoing down the corridor.

"Sorry," Matt said. "I thought she'd want to help and might know something useful. It was the best lead I'd run into. What was going on between you two anyway? I thought you'd get more out of her than I could, drawing on your common love of quilts."

"I doubt we've got anything in common. Still, it was worth talking to her, if only to confirm that she doesn't have any leads for us. I had to come here anyway to deliver the written appraisal on Stefan's quilt." I rummaged in my bag. "I'll just leave it here for Gil and save myself a trip later on."

"Gil must be part of the meeting that Nancy's going to."

"I'd love to be the proverbial fly on the wall at this one," I said. "I bet it's got something to do with Tremain, either his murder or his business practices."

"The directors meet down the hall on the other side of the staircase," Matt said. "Unfortunately, I don't think we could hear anything from outside the conference room. The museum kept the building's original solid doors when they renovated."

"No point in sticking around here then." I dropped the appraisal report in the center of Gil's desk and followed Matt out through the waiting room and into the hallway. "From what Gil's told me about past meetings, this one could go on for hours. I still need to finish up my speech for tomorrow. I'll check in with Gil first thing in the morning."

"I'll keep digging around the newsrooms for more leads," Matt said. "There must be some statehouse-beat reporters I haven't hit up yet."

*   *   *

I was grateful for Matt's offer of a ride home. Even though it was only a ten-minute walk, I needed every available second to finish my speech for tomorrow.

When he pulled into my driveway, Lindsay's car was already there, idling in what had once been a drive-through lane when my house was a bank and was now a carport. Matt parked next to it, and Lindsay emerged to run around the car and help her grandmother out. Despite all of Lindsay's considerable muscle development from her weight lifting and bell ringing, she sagged a little when Dee leaned on her. They both had to be exhausted after a long day overseeing the final quilt show preparations.

Matt took Lindsay's place, supporting Dee along the path while I went to unlock the door. Retaining the bank's ADA-compliant entrance was proving to have been a wise decision. Dee might not have been able to navigate a set of stairs comfortably today, and she'd have been too stubborn to admit it.

I whispered to Lindsay, "Why didn't you take Dee straight home? She's exhausted."

"She wouldn't go. Not until she checked to see if there was anything more she could do to get Emma out of jail."

"I can hear you, and I'm fine," Dee said as she approached the closest thing I had to a throne: the pair of wingback chairs in the living room. "The quilt show prep is as done as it can be. Not as well as if Emma had been there, but she'll fix it in the morning."

I dropped my messenger bag on the kitchen peninsula. "Emma may not be released by then."

"Nonsense," Dee said. "Just tell me how I can help."

It was never a good idea, as a lawyer or as an appraiser, to let a client's expectations get out of hand, but I just didn't have the heart right now to tell Dee that we'd reached a dead end, at least in terms of doing anything tonight. I looked at Matt, hoping he had a better answer than I did.