Quilt Trip: A Southern Quilting Mystery (17 page)

•   •   •

Finally, blissfully, Beatrice got some uninterrupted sleep.

Beatrice quilted for a bit the next morning while she thought about her next step.

“Beatrice, you’re doing a wonderful job with those cathedral windows!” said Posy, beaming at her.

“It’s coming together nicely, isn’t it?” Beatrice said, feeling surprised. “But that’s because you had such beautiful fabrics for the ‘windows.’ I love all the different shades of blue. They coordinate beautifully, but are so different. Turquoise, robin’s egg, indigo, midnight blue, periwinkle—I love how they all come together to make this beautiful whole.”

Meadow squinted at the quilt over her red glasses. “I think that’s because the patterns on the squares of fabric are all very simple and not busy. Faint flower prints and larger polka dots and paisleys. They meld together really well.”

“It’s all much easier than I thought it was going to be,” said Beatrice. “It’s the type of thing that
looks
complicated but is really not that difficult.” She had a feeling she’d be making more cathedral window patterns in the future.

She glanced over curiously to see what Posy was working on. “Posy, you’ve been so good to get everyone set up with fabrics and notions and templates and tips that I haven’t noticed you doing much quilting yourself. What are you hand-piecing? I saw you cutting circles out earlier. I was impressed by how perfect the circles you’d drawn were.”

Posy give her a wink.

“Oh,” Beatrice said. “Were the circles from a template you had in the quilting mobile?”

“No, but I can’t claim them, just the same. I traced around a bowl I found in the kitchen.”

“Are those going to be yo-yos?” asked Meadow, peering at Posy’s fabric.

“They sure are. Aren’t they fun?” Posy said in her gentle voice.

“Remind me what yo-yos are again?” said Beatrice, figuring they surely couldn’t be talking about the bouncing stringed toy.

“They’re circles of fabric,” Meadow explained. “You turn down the edges and secure them with a running stitch so that the fabric gathers up when you pull the end of the thread. Then you can whipstitch the yo-yos together to make a quilt.”

“Or to decorate another project. You know, to add texture to it,” added Posy.

“I love those pink and white circles,” said Beatrice.

“I thought they’d be sweet for a coverlet for a girl’s bed,” said Posy, beaming at her. “I’ve got a grandniece in mind.”

They all worked quietly for a few minutes. Then Meadow said, “All right, I can’t suppress my curiosity anymore. I know we’re supposed to be de-stressing and all, but I’d like to know Beatrice’s next move for the case. Who are you planning on talking to?”

“Dot was next on my list,” said Beatrice. “I guess I’ll talk with her after lunch.”

Beatrice hadn’t had a chance yet to ask Dot why she hadn’t revealed that she’d been Muriel’s employee for years.

After an uninspired lunch of canned pears and baby carrots, Beatrice asked Dot if she could speak to her in the study for a few minutes. “Okeydokey,” said Dot cheerfully, thumping with her cane as she headed to the study.

As soon as she’d plopped into a chair and sighed in relief at being off her feet, she said, “What’s up, Beatrice? Got a new lead you’re working on?”

“Not so much a new lead, but more like a new line of questions,” said Beatrice.

Dot nodded. “Well, get on with it, then. This has something to do with that harpy Winnie, I’d guess.”

Beatrice bit back a laugh at her description. Really, she’d come to feel sorry for Winnie. She was emotionally fragile, and this wasn’t the place for fragile people. “Yes, I guess it does. But don’t blame Winnie. I asked her if she could give me some background on you, since you hadn’t offered up much yourself.”

Dot sighed. “I suppose she told you all about me working for Muriel for all those years. And here I was ready to let bygones be bygones.”

“Dot, it sounded like you had every reason to be upset.”

“Because Muriel and her minions promised me that if I waited I’d be rewarded for all my hard work by a promotion? A promise that they knew was just empty words because they already had plans to close the factory?” If Dot was bitter, it didn’t show in her words.

“Most people would carry a real grudge against Muriel, Dot. After all, it practically amounts to theft. You asked for raises and bonuses and were told you’d get your payment later on . . . and Muriel knew you wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I was real steamed.
Real
steamed. Believe me, I gave Muriel a blowing out that I bet she never forgot. Nobody ever talked to Muriel that way because nobody dared to. I wasn’t intimidated by her one whit, though. I let her have it. But then . . . why hold on to that kind of thing year after year? I don’t believe in carrying grudges. My me-maw always told me that life was full of lemons. I could try to make lemonade with them. Or, if I couldn’t, I could learn to swallow the lemons I was given—tart or not.” She laughed. “It’s not been easy. But me-maws are always right.”

“And you’ve been all right since you left Muriel’s factory?” asked Beatrice. “You’ve been able to find something else to do?”

Dot glanced away into the fire for a moment. “Sure, I have. I’m a survivor, right? I know how to take care of myself.” She chuckled. “Now I won’t say that I won’t be jumping up and down with absolute joy if we find out that Muriel left money or trinkets to me in her will as a consolation prize.”

Beatrice smiled at her. “I hope so, Dot. I think she owed you more than that blanket apology you got.”

“I guess we haven’t come any closer to finding any wills lying around, have we? Of course, if we do come across any wills, Miss Thing is likely to rip them out of our hands and throw them into the fire if they don’t mention her as heir supreme,” Dot said with a snort.

Beatrice felt like kicking herself. With all the talk of secret passageways and rats and ghosts—combined with genuine exhaustion—she’d completely forgotten that Alexandra had the key to the attic. She needed to get that back, not that it would be easy to pry it out of Alexandra’s hands. And if she couldn’t get it back . . . she was going to have to stay a lot closer to Alexandra than she would have wanted.

“Absolutely not,” said Alexandra coolly. “I’m certainly not going to give you that key back. Why should I? This is my house. I should have a key to any room in the house if I so desire. Why should
you
have a key? You own nothing here and have nothing to do with the house. I should be asking you for
your
key.”

“The reason I’m asking for the key,” said Beatrice as patiently as she could muster, “is because I’m a neutral party here in this house. You’re right—I have nothing to do with the house or anything in it. It’s what makes me a better candidate than you to have possession of the keys to the attic.”

“Why on earth are you so worried about me going into my own attic?”

“Why on earth are you so determined to get up there?”

Alexandra glared at her in silence. Beatrice met her gaze until finally Alexandra snapped, “I want to find Mother’s will, of course. For some reason, she seems to have kept a lot of old documents upstairs. I want to go through them. It’s personal business.”

Of course, not all of what was up in the attic was personal to Alexandra. Some of it—in fact a good deal of it—was personal to Holly. Beatrice wondered how Holly would feel about Alexandra discovering she was her half sister. She likely wouldn’t want her to discover it by rummaging around in the attic—she’d probably want to have a conversation with her face-to-face.

“Once more, will you give me the key back?”

“Once more, no!”

“Then I’m going to have to insist that I go up in the attic with you whenever you go up there,” Beatrice said heavily. “I want to make sure you don’t destroy anything that might pertain to this case before the police are able to do their investigation.”

Alexandra stared down her aquiline nose at her. “More about your
case
, right? I still say that the police are going to find that a terminally ill woman died of natural causes and that her lawyer died of a heart attack. But, sure—if you want to follow along on my trips to the attic, come along. I’m not going to come knocking on your door, though. You’ll have to keep tabs on me, won’t you?” She laughed unpleasantly.

Posy and Meadow joined Beatrice in the study after Alexandra had flounced out. “Want me to shadow her?” Meadow asked eagerly, once Beatrice had filled her in on their conversation. “I’ve always fancied the life of a private eye. Sneaking around and stuff.”

The idea of Meadow managing to be quiet enough to follow people without being detected made Beatrice smile. “Thanks, Meadow. I don’t think she’s heading up there immediately, though. Besides, we can’t watch her twenty-four hours a day. But we’ll do our best.”

Posy said slowly, “So are we thinking that Alexandra is behind these murders, then?” She shivered.

“I’m not completely convinced, no,” said Beatrice. “Although she’s definitely a top suspect.”

“I’ll say!” said Meadow. “She knew about the secret hiding place under the stairs . . . and there was the sleeping pill bottle. She knew about secret passageways, too, and it would have been easy as anything to kill Muriel and Colton and slip back to bed without being detected. Besides, she had a ton of motive—her mother was about to change her will in favor of Holly and a quilting foundation and who knows what else! She would have wanted to prevent her mother and Colton from coming up with a new will.”

“You’re forgetting one very important thing, Meadow,” Beatrice replied. “Alexandra didn’t know that Holly is her half sister. So there shouldn’t have been any rush to prevent a new will from being written up.”

“This foundation could have been huge, though,” Meadow countered. “We don’t know what Muriel was planning. Maybe Muriel was sick of Alexandra and decided to leave her a tiny amount as an insult and then leave the bulk of the estate to her foundation. That would certainly have provided Alexandra with a motive.”

“I think you’re stuck on Alexandra because you don’t like her very much,” said Beatrice.

“Sure, that plays into it, too,” Meadow said with a shrug. “She’s unpleasant. Maybe she’s more than just unpleasant—maybe she’s sort of wicked, too. And we don’t
know
that Alexandra didn’t know about Holly. Maybe she overheard Muriel and Holly talking—maybe she was eavesdropping on them. With all the secret passageways in this house, she could have been hiding out and listening to every word.”

“There are other people with motives, too,” reminded Beatrice. “Look at Winnie.”

“Now there is one unhappy lady,” said Posy, shaking her head sadly.

“It’s like Dot was saying earlier,” said Beatrice. “Winnie should learn to live and let live. But she couldn’t forgive Muriel for stealing away the love of her life. She also appeared to blame her for her life of hard work, since she believes she’d have been living a much more comfortable life if she’d married her old beau. Winnie couldn’t let it go and it ended up eating her up inside. That’s a great motive. In Winnie’s eyes, Muriel ruined her life.”

“Poor Winnie,” said Posy.

“Silly ninny,” said Meadow. She thought a moment and said, “Holly could have almost the same motive, right? She was basically abandoned by her mother, who could have provided her with a very comfortable life. Instead, she was shuttled around to different foster homes. She could be vengeful, too, couldn’t she? She could be bitter.”

Beatrice nodded. “Holly could be. She sure was upset the night that Muriel revealed she was her mother. I thought she sounded mad, too. She had every right to be angry. And she certainly had the opportunity to commit the murders. Although I’d think she had even
more
motive to kill Alexandra—the other heir and potentially the
only
heir, if Muriel didn’t get around to updating her will.”

Posy said gently, “I know she’s a suspect, but somehow I can’t see Holly killing anyone. She seems like a wonderful person. Just because she got upset doesn’t mean she’d commit murder.”

“So what about Dot?” asked Meadow. “She’s our last suspect, isn’t she? Although I suppose she’s a bit handicapped to have killed Colton. Muriel’s death happened before Dot was injured, though.”

“I don’t think her sprained ankle knocks her out of the running as Colton’s murderer,” said Beatrice.

“But she was upstairs while everyone was having supper, wasn’t she?” Posy knit her brows.

“True. But Colton did take his wineglass upstairs. Perhaps he left his room to visit the restroom and Dot slipped in and messed with his drink,” said Beatrice.

“Remind me again why Dot would kill Muriel?” asked Meadow, squinting.

“Because she worked for Muriel for years, and Muriel, who as owner was highly involved with the mill, kept telling Dot that she would give her a raise when she got promoted to some important position. But Muriel knew she was going to close the mill right after she gave Dot the promotion.”

“Ahh, right,” said Meadow.

“So she double-crossed her,” said Posy indignantly.

“She sure did. Just to be cheap,” said Beatrice.

“It definitely sounds like a motive to me,” said Meadow. “But I still say that Alexandra did it. Money is always the strongest motive of all.”

•   •   •

At supper that night, Alexandra didn’t do much to persuade Meadow that she wasn’t capable of murder. She yelled at Miss Sissy again for giving the cat their tuna and picked at her canned lima beans like a three-year-old.

Then Alexandra jumped on Holly when she mildly proposed they bring real bedding, perhaps even mattresses, to the library for those who decided to sleep there. “What right do you have to rearrange this house?” she asked archly. “It’s my house, and I should be the one who says if furniture gets rearranged.”

Alexandra was completely shocked when Holly burst into tears. “What is this?” she asked Beatrice, gesturing to Holly.

Beatrice wasn’t about to be the one to explain Holly’s recent news, so she kept her lips pressed tightly shut.

“While I’m at it,” said Alexandra, angry at Beatrice’s determined silence, “I’m really sick of this charade of an investigation that you’re putting on. Playing detective. Why don’t you give it a break?”

Holly managed to say in a shaking voice, “Alexandra, leave Beatrice alone. It’s me that you’re angry with, so stop yelling at Beatrice. She’s just trying to work things out and she’s doing us all a favor.” Holly took a deep breath. “What I’m upset about is that you and I are sisters and you know nothing about it.”

“
What?
”

Alexandra appeared completely shocked and horrified at the revelation. “It isn’t true—” She gasped.

Holly’s eyes were sad. “It is true. And I’m very sorry.”

Meadow gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Well, it’s certainly not
your
fault, nor does it have anything to do with you, Holly.”

“So that’s why you’re here,” Alexandra snapped. “Did you learn how to quilt so that you could wiggle your way in to see my mother? Did you learn that she was deathly ill and you wanted to make sure to visit her, charm her, so that she’d change her will in your favor? What did you do for her while she was alive?”

“What did
you
do for her while she was alive?” Dot asked with a snort.

Alexandra narrowed her eyes.

Holly quickly said, “Alexandra, I don’t want to argue with you. You’re right—I wasn’t here for your mother . . . our mother. But I wish I had been. I wish I’d gotten to know her. I had no idea she was my mother until she told me our first night here. That’s one thing I wish I had from her—time.”

“And money,” said Alexandra coldly. “This is all such a likely story. I bet you hired a detective to track down your birth mother. Then as soon as you found out she was someone with means, you learned how best to win her over. It must have been very easy to learn of her passion for quilting.”

“But I’ve been quilting for decades!” Holly spluttered.

“So you say. Biding your time, most likely, until you hear that Mother is terminally ill. Then you realize you’d better make your move so that she can change her will before she passes away.” Alexandra sneered.

“She sent me an invitation about the quilting foundation!” said Holly. “You heard her mention that she’d invited me.”

Alexandra shrugged. “A coincidence. And a lucky one for you.”

They all stared wide-eyed at Alexandra, at the pure viciousness and hatred dripping from her voice.

She met their gazes and said, “I’ve had enough of all of you. I’m going upstairs.”

After helping clean up—which somehow Alexandra had yet again gotten out of—Beatrice decided she’d do the same. Her head was pounding from all the unanswered questions and from the heightened emotions over dinner. “I’ve got a terrible headache, y’all. I’m going to turn in.”

“Sleeping upstairs?” asked Meadow.

“I think I need a more comfortable place to sleep tonight,” said Beatrice. “Maybe I can relax more and get better-quality rest. Are you sleeping upstairs, Meadow?”

“No. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll sleep down with the fire again tonight. It feels chillier tonight somehow.”

Great. All they needed was more cold. It was almost as if they were entering a second Ice Age.

Beatrice crawled into bed and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Even when the others came upstairs to turn in, she didn’t stir and continued her deep sleep.

Until there was a scratching on her door.