Quilt Trip: A Southern Quilting Mystery (14 page)

Meadow blinked at her. “No, I’ve never noticed it. Okay, so I’ll give you a few minutes to go upstairs, and then I’ll follow. What if you find that the door at the top of the stairs is locked?”

“Then I’ll be coming back down again quickly, of course, and we’ll search for the key.”

The upstairs was dark and quiet. Everyone had gone downstairs to warm up by the fire. Beatrice walked quickly down the long hall and over to the narrow staircase beside Muriel’s room.

She hesitantly put her weight on the bottom stair. The staircase sure was rickety. Beatrice wasn’t a big woman, but she wondered if the rather delicate staircase could hold her weight. The idea of the staircase collapsing and sending her plunging back down to the second floor was a scary thought.

•   •   •

The stairs appeared to be sturdier than they seemed, although they did squeak a fair amount. Beatrice quickly climbed them.

There was a door at the top of the stairs and Beatrice turned the glass knob. The door didn’t budge. Beatrice sighed. There could be clues in the attic and she was going to have to figure out how to get in. Obviously Alexandra had been searching for a way in, too.

As Beatrice stood frowning at the door, she heard a distinctive squeak on the bottom step. She leaned over to peer down and saw Miss Sissy, who quickly put a finger to her mouth and held up a key.

Miss Sissy scampered lithely up the stairs and handed her the key. Beatrice inserted it in the lock, turned it, and then turned the door handle once again.

The attic door swung open and Beatrice smiled at Miss Sissy. She lit her candle and they walked into the dark space that was only slightly lit by attic vents. The musty smell was even more pungent up here and Beatrice jumped as a moth flew past her. The large space appeared to be used just for storage, judging from all the clothes racks full of hanging bags, steamer trunks, old furniture, and picture frames she saw up there.

“How did you find the key?” Beatrice asked Miss Sissy quietly.

“Remembered where my own mother hid keys,” said Miss Sissy. “Wondered if the old gal had done the same thing.”

It was funny to hear “old gal” coming from Miss Sissy, considering she was clearly much older than Muriel had been.

“Where was that?” asked Beatrice.

“Taped to the bottom of one of the linen closet shelves.” Miss Sissy’s bright eyes showed her to be much more alert than she had been earlier. It was amazing how fast her mental aptitude came and went.

They could hear more squeaking out on the staircase, and Miss Sissy tensed up. Beatrice quickly said, “That’s only Meadow, Miss Sissy. I told her to join me up here separately so that we wouldn’t draw a lot of attention to ourselves.”

Meadow stuck her head through the attic door, then smiled as she spotted Beatrice and Miss Sissy. “Almost like a party up here!” she said delightedly. Meadow glanced around. “Although I don’t think we’re going to find anything but a bunch of old junk up here.” She squinted across the attic. “What’s that over there, though?”

Beatrice peered across the attic and saw a turret alcove. She frowned. “I thought the turret functioned as Muriel’s private bath off her bedroom,” she said to the others.

“It did,” said Meadow. “But it was probably a two-story turret. So the bottom part was the private bath off Muriel’s room and the top part was a small alcove off the attic. Don’t you just love this house? Secret hiding places and creepy attics and cupolas and turrets . . .”

“Why would you even have an alcove off an attic?” asked Beatrice.

“For an element of mystery, Beatrice! These old houses are rife with the element of mystery, didn’t you know? This place reeks of Southern gothic.”

“Complete with the dead bodies,” said Beatrice glumly.

“There are probably all kinds of secrets over in that alcove. It’s fantastic!” Meadow said.

“Secrets!” chorused Miss Sissy, clapping her hands.

They trod across the attic toward the turret. “I’m not even going to pay any attention to this other stuff,” said Meadow in her stage whisper. “It looks like the same stuff that I’ve got in
my
attic. But that desk over there looks a lot more interesting.”

And it did. Because, for the life of her, Beatrice couldn’t figure out why there would be a desk in the attic. Right up there in the turret, too.

“Do you think she fancied herself a writer?” Meadow asked in a doubtful voice. “Having a desk up here seems like something Jo in
Little Women
would do—write in the attic.”

“You know,” Beatrice said, “it might just be a spare desk—just like the extra chairs and chests of drawers and tables all piled up here. But perhaps then she realized it was a great place to keep papers away from prying eyes.”

“It wouldn’t exactly be comfortable to sit up here, though,” said Meadow, making a face. “It’s freezing up here now, and in summer it would be three hundred degrees.”

“Maybe not so bad in the summer. These turret windows actually open. She could have sat up here with a window open and it might have been fairly pleasant at this elevation.”

Miss Sissy scowled at the alcove. The massive wooden desk was full of pigeonholes and cubbies. A swivel chair faced it. There was nothing else in the alcove.

“Okay, let’s get at it,” said Meadow, rubbing her hands together and plopping into the chair.

Beatrice reached for a stack of papers on the desk and Meadow reached for another. Miss Sissy wandered off to explore the other parts of the attic.

After a few minutes, Beatrice frowned. “I’m seeing a lot of baby pictures here,” she said.

“Recent ones?” asked Meadow.

“No, some really old color pictures. A few black-and-white snapshots, too. They’re mostly of a little girl.”

“Is there a name on the back?” Meadow asked.

Beatrice flipped several of the pictures over. “No. And that’s annoying. I always label the backs of my photos. After all,
I
might know who’s in the pictures, but that doesn’t help anyone else if I’m not around to identify the people.”

“They’re probably old pictures of Alexandra,” Meadow said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Muriel must have been like everyone else in the world and had a pile of pictures she kept meaning to put in an album. Finally you get to the point where you want to hide the pictures out of view and not even see them anymore to remind you how slack you’ve been.”

“Probably,” Beatrice muttered. “Although I wonder where all these pictures were taken.”

Meadow started chuckling, which ended up in a coughing fit. “Dust—” She gasped. Once she’d gotten control of herself, she handed a photo across to Beatrice. “Colton with hair!”

Sure enough, there was a picture of a younger Muriel staring triumphantly straight at the camera. Beside her was a younger version of Colton, with hair. He had his usual serious features, but in his eyes was an expression of pure joy. He was obviously thrilled to be marrying Muriel. They apparently married here at the house. The old Victorian home appeared much younger in the pictures, too.

“He looks to be devoted to Muriel,” Beatrice said as she stared at the picture. “No wonder he was happy to come over and help her set up her foundation. He was also concerned about the way she’d brought heirs here while in the process of changing her will. He must still have deeply loved her.”

Meadow peered back over at the photo. “You’re getting all that from the picture? I was laughing at seeing him with hair.”

They continued going through pictures and papers. “There are lots of letters in my stack,” said Meadow. “And lots of them are correspondence with Colton. I guess I must have happened into the official Colton stack of stuff.”

Beatrice was almost halfway through her pile. “My pile is chock-full of Alexandra pictures. From a distance, which is kind of odd. Long lens.” She stopped and peered closer at one of the photographs. “Okay, this is a picture of an older child. A teen. But she sure doesn’t resemble Alexandra. In fact, even the baby pictures don’t resemble Alexandra. You know how Alexandra has that really distinctive, aquiline nose? I don’t see it in these photos.”

“Maybe she had her nose done,” Meadow said, with a shrug.

“But wouldn’t her nose appear
better
if she had it done, not worse?” Beatrice kept staring at the pictures in front of her. “I don’t think these are of Alexandra at all. And the child isn’t even smiling at the camera in any of these. It almost appears like the child doesn’t know her picture is being taken.”

Meadow leaned over to see. “You’re right—this kid doesn’t really look like Alexandra much. Do you think it’s a niece or something? There’s a resemblance to Alexandra, but it’s definitely not her.”

“Aren’t these a lot of pictures to have of a niece?” Beatrice frowned.

Miss Sissy made a squawking sound and held up an expanding file folder. “Clues!” she barked.

Beatrice walked over to Miss Sissy and took the file folder. “Let’s take this over to the window, Miss Sissy. It’s too dark to read it over here.”

They huddled around the folder. “Anything interesting?” asked Meadow, peeking over Beatrice’s shoulder.

“They’re receipts,” Beatrice said as she slowly leafed through the papers. “Mostly from AAA Investigative Services.”

Meadow snorted. “Was she trying to keep tabs on Colton? Maybe he wasn’t as boring as we thought.”

“I think,” said a quiet voice behind them that made them gasp and spin around, “that Muriel was trying to keep tabs on
me
.”

It was Holly.

Beatrice tried reading Holly’s expression, but she couldn’t. “We’re sorry to snoop around, Holly. We’re trying to find clues to help us figure out what’s going on.”

Holly said sadly, “That’s what I’ve been doing, too, so don’t feel bad about snooping. You’ve just as much right to come up here as I do.”

“Is this where you were the other night when Dot noticed you were out of bed?” asked Beatrice.

Holly nodded. “I came up here to look around. Practically burned the candle down to a nub—it was so dark up in the attic at night. I should have simply found a quiet time to sneak up here in the daytime so I could see what I was doing.” She sighed. “And no matter what I found, it didn’t
explain
anything to me.”

“Explain?” Meadow asked.

“Those pictures,” said Beatrice. “They are all of you, aren’t they? You are Muriel’s daughter, aren’t you?”

Holly’s eyes filled with tears. “I am. Not in any real sense of the word, though. I had no idea she was my mother until she told me that night before she died.”

Beatrice remembered that Muriel had told Colton she’d been determined to speak to someone. She also remembered overhearing Holly’s tears during their conversation. “What did Muriel tell you?”

Holly took a deep breath and resumed her frequent nervous habit of winding her red hair around a forefinger. “She said that she’d become pregnant with me and that it would have created a huge scandal because she wasn’t married at the time. Muriel said it was hard enough to be taken seriously at the mill without an accidental pregnancy. She concealed her pregnancy as best she could with loose clothing, and then told everyone she was going abroad for a while. No one thought anything of it because she frequently traveled and because she’d had a rough time in the years before with a failed marriage and the death of her mother.”

Meadow’s eyes were wide. “So she left town to have you?”

“There was a home for unwed mothers somewhere up north. Muriel stayed there the last few weeks of her pregnancy. As soon as I was born, she gave me up for adoption.”

“But you didn’t get adopted,” said Beatrice gently.

“No,” said Holly. “I went into foster care.”

Meadow said quickly, “But we can see that your mother kept up with you during your entire childhood! There are tons of pictures in that stack from the time you were little on up.”

Holly thought this through, head down so that her hair formed a curtain around her face. “But it’s not the same, is it? She hired an investigator to take pictures of me so that she could see how I was doing. I guess she could tell from the photos that I was healthy and well and what I looked like. She couldn’t see what I was like on the inside, though. And that’s where I was really hurting.”

“How long did she keep up with you, Holly?” Beatrice asked. “Did you find any pictures from when you were an adult?”

“I did. Not as many, of course. I think by then she was content that I’d grown up. But there are scattered pictures in there. Muriel was particularly interested in the fact that I was a quilter.” Holly was fighting tears again.

“How did you react when Muriel told you that she was your mother?” asked Beatrice. “That must have been a tremendous shock.”

“I had no idea what Muriel wanted to talk to me about,” Holly said. She sank down on the top of a nearby steamer trunk, reliving the memory. “We were down in her study with a candle and she was telling me she was my mother and I could only stare at her. It didn’t seem real at all—just with the lighting and all. It was almost as if it had been staged. I guess she thought I didn’t believe her, although why would she make up a story like that? She gave me a key to the attic and told me to see for myself—that she’d kept all kinds of pictures of me throughout my lifetime. She told me where to find them.”

“Did you go up here that night?” Beatrice asked.

“No. After Muriel gave me the key to the attic, I suddenly fell apart.” Holly sighed. “It made it more real somehow. I only wanted to go to bed and hopefully the weather would improve and I could get away the next day.”

“Did Muriel say anything about why she was suddenly getting in touch with you after all these years?” asked Beatrice.

Holly stared at the file folder. “She was apparently trying to make amends for not being a part of my life. She told me she was sorry I’d had such a rough life, and she planned to make it up to me. Colton was here to help her change her will to favor me. She hoped that she and I could have some sort of a relationship before her terminal illness ended her life. Muriel said that . . .” Holly hesitated. “Well, it wasn’t very nice of her to say, but she said that Alexandra had been a disappointment as a daughter to her.”

“What did you say to that?” Meadow asked, drawing in a breath.

“What
can
you say to that?” said Holly. “I was so overwhelmed from what she’d told me that I wanted to go turn in for the day. I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d talk to her. How could I know?” She stretched out her hands helplessly to Meadow and Beatrice.

Meadow said thoughtfully, “Muriel was really hopelessly naive in many ways, wasn’t she?”

Beatrice frowned. “She seemed very complex to me. Why do you think she was naive?”

“To think that a simple apology could wipe away all the hurt and stress over the decades,” said Meadow. “Why would she think it would be so easy?”

“Muriel was the kind of person who was used to people doing what she said,” Beatrice explained. “To her, this was probably no different. So if she apologized and asked someone to accept her apology, in her mind it wouldn’t be any different from any other request she made—people would hop to it.”

“It all makes me feel so sad,” Holly said. “Mostly, I’m sad that I never got the opportunity to know her. And it makes me angry, too. There were so many wasted years.” She glanced down at the key in her hand. “Here, Beatrice. You take this. I don’t want it. Being up here only makes me more confused.”

•   •   •

They all went quietly downstairs, glancing around them to make sure that no one was watching them exit. Miss Sissy hurried off to make herself a snack—being in the attic had apparently made her hungry—and Beatrice and Meadow adjourned to their room to discuss what they’d found out.

“What do you think?” Meadow asked in her stage whisper.

“It’s all very sad, isn’t it?” Beatrice said quietly. “Here you have Holly, who seems like a really good person. She had a very tough life, growing up in foster care. Her childhood may even have had implications for later in life—we know she had a failed marriage. Maybe this belated apology and Muriel’s assumption that it would make everything okay was enough to push Holly over the edge.”

“Maybe,” Meadow said judiciously. “Although that would have been kind of a stupid thing for Holly to do, right? I mean, Colton was here at the house to alter Muriel’s will in her favor. All she had to do was at least wait until that will was drawn up.”

“And probably become a very wealthy woman,” said Beatrice. “But who knows if her emotions got the better of her? From what I overheard the night Muriel was murdered, Holly was very distraught.”

Meadow snorted. “I think if Holly murdered anybody she should have gone after Alexandra. It would have annoyed the hang out of me to see that smug face and know that selfish creature grew up totally catered to while I was struggling to survive.
That’s
who would have driven me to murder.”

“Alexandra had been obviously snooping around searching for that key,” Beatrice said. “She wanted to check out the attic herself.”

“Do you think she knew about Holly’s true identity?” asked Meadow. “Or suspected it?”

“I don’t think Alexandra knew anything about it,” Beatrice said. “After all, she would have been one of the last ones that Muriel would have told about another daughter. Think what would have happened if Alexandra had realized that Holly was a potential heir. Holly might have ended up as a victim herself. No, I think Alexandra was searching for the key because she suspected there might be a copy of the will up there.”