Quilt Trip: A Southern Quilting Mystery (6 page)

“That sounds like a lot of trouble,” grouched Winnie. “It sure would have been a lot easier to put peanut butter on bread or crackers.”

“We would’ve had to break into the soup and other foods after lunch anyway.” Meadow shrugged. “That peanut butter wouldn’t have lasted more than one meal. Besides, this will give Posy and me a challenge. We’ll find a pot to put the soup in and stick it over the library fire since Beatrice is busy in the study. It’s not a big deal, Winnie.”

Winnie didn’t seem convinced.

Beatrice said, “Dot, since you’ve already had lunch, would you like to come talk with me next?”

Relief passed across Dot’s broad features. “That sounds like a good plan,” she said quickly.

Once in the study Dot sat down in the chair next to the fire and pulled it away from the fireplace a little. “Kind of warm in here, isn’t it?” She mopped her face with a tissue she pulled out of her jeans pocket.

It wasn’t really, not with that miniature fire. But Dot was in the hot seat, after all. “I guess the room is small enough to get stuffy,” Beatrice said noncommittally.

Dot shifted uneasily in the chair, drumming her fingers on the arm. “So what do you need to ask me?” she said, looking Beatrice steadily in the eyes.

“How well did you know Muriel Starnes?” asked Beatrice. “It seems like most of the quilters that Muriel had specifically invited here were people she’d known for years.”

Dot held her gaze. “I did know Muriel. Have done for years. She and I were in the same quilting guild for ages.”

“Did you get along?”

Dot snorted. “Did anybody get along with Muriel? Not really. Only if Muriel was in the mood to get along.”

“Muriel said she had a couple of different reasons for bringing this group here. We all knew about the quilting foundation and scholarship program. But there was another reason she’d gathered everyone—to make amends.”

Dot grinned. “That’s right. Muriel also said that she knew that the people she wanted to make amends with wouldn’t come simply because she asked them here—that she’d had to
lure
them with quilting.”

“Were you one of the ones she was trying to lure?” Beatrice asked.

“Absolutely,” said Dot, stoutly.

“What was it that Muriel was trying to make amends with you for?”

“Oh, just general nastiness,” said Dot in her cheery voice. “Nothing specific.”

Beatrice somehow thought that wasn’t the case. “You can’t think of a particular instance that she might have been trying to apologize for?” she pressed.

Dot shrugged and stared down at her American flag T-shirt, which now had a small peanut butter smear on it. “Not particularly,” she said. “Although I still think it’s hilarious how Muriel thought that an impersonal, general apology was going to make everything better. It doesn’t usually work that way in life, does it? People hold grudges. More than just
hold
the grudges, they cherish and nourish them! They don’t want to give them up . . . They’re almost like pets. Muriel, though, was the last person to understand human nature.”

Beatrice thought about pushing Dot more on the reasons that she and Muriel had fallen out, but decided not to . . . yet. She had a feeling that Dot could, very abruptly, decide to stop being cooperative.

“What were your movements last night after supper?” asked Beatrice. “And did you see or hear anything after you turned in?”

Dot picked at the peanut butter stain. “I was tired of the whole situation by the time supper was over and ready to get away from Muriel. I went upstairs and helped Holly find quilts for our beds—the closets were stuffed with them, you know. And a few of them were absolutely gorgeous.” Her eyes glowed as she said this.

So Dot was definitely a quilt lover. “I saw some beautiful ones myself,” said Beatrice with a smile.

Dot grinned at her. “If we start getting bored with investigating Muriel’s death and trying to survive without heat and good food, we could always put on our own quilt show in the library. I’d love to see all these quilts laid out.” She smiled to herself at the prospect and appeared to be planning a quilt show in her head. “One of the quilts I dug out last night was a lovely botanical print. You’ve gotta see it, Beatrice. The plants are almost animated and the colors are amazing . . . all forest greens and light greens and cranberry reds.”

“I’ll be sure to look for it. I think Muriel was particularly fond of botanicals; there was a beautiful one in the closet in Meadow’s and my room, too. So after you and Holly got the quilts, what happened then?”

Dot sighed, reluctant to continue. “We got ready to turn in—as well as we could, anyway. After all, there was nothing to do. I didn’t bring anything to read, obviously, and the books in Muriel’s library are only there for show, I think. Anyway, the books are all about a hundred years old and not a single thriller in the bunch. No, thanks. Holly managed to find a copy of
Little Women
,
so she was happy. I wouldn’t have had any light to read by even if I’d wanted to read. Holly and I didn’t have a candle.”

Beatrice frowned. “I thought we handed out candles to the rooms that had two people in them. It seemed only fair. Meadow and I had a candle.”

Dot made a face. “Well, we
did
have a candle, before Holly gave it away. She’s too sweet, that one. She started worrying about the old lawyer stumbling around and thoughtfully handed him
our
candle. I think he must have burned it out when he used it—there wasn’t that much of it left. Hey—one of us should go back into Muriel’s room and swipe her candle. That way we could all have one for tonight.”

It was a good idea, but Beatrice couldn’t help but shiver at the mere thought of spending another chilly night in the dark house. With a murderer afoot. “We’ll have to think about it. I guess if one of us puts gloves on and is careful not to disturb anything. So, after you went to sleep, did you wake up at all? Did you see or hear anything?”

Dot bobbed her head. “I sure did. I was thirsty in the night and got up to get water. Then I got cold and got up to find another quilt to throw on the bed. Most of the time I’m hot-natured, but not last night. Holly was sound asleep, by the way, whenever I woke up. I’m not saying she
couldn’t
have done it, but it sure would have been tricky. But one of the times when I left our room, I saw that old lawyer walking around. Didn’t even have the candle that Holly had given him!”

“He was just walking around, or could you tell where he’d been?”

“It sure looked to me like he was coming back from Muriel’s room. Unless he somehow accidentally lost his way en route from the toilet.”

Winnie Tyson came into the study next. Her mouth was already pursed in disapproval before she even set foot across the threshold. Somehow her white blouse was just as crisp as it had been the day before. It must have really been starched to death, Beatrice mulled. Still, it hung loosely on her thin shoulders, as if several sizes too big. She was shivering from the drafty chill of the house and had wrapped one of Muriel’s quilts around her.

Winnie sat as far away from Beatrice as she could possibly get, sitting very straight in her chair with the quilt pulled firmly around her. “I suppose we should get on with it.” Her voice indicated she could barely tolerate the situation.

Beatrice glanced down at her notebook. The only person who had mentioned Winnie in the interviews so far was Alexandra. Winnie had a room to herself, so she definitely had the opportunity to sneak out of it. “What was your relationship with Muriel Starnes like?” Beatrice asked her.

Winnie sat even straighter, if that was possible. “I wouldn’t say that we had a relationship at all,” she said almost haughtily.

Beatrice suppressed a sigh. “Clearly, though, at one point in the past you did have a friendship of some kind with Muriel. Can you tell me a little about that?”

“We had quilting in common and met at a guild meeting long ago. She was quite a fine quilter.” Winnie acted as if it physically pained her to say the words.

“I’m guessing that you saw each other apart from quilting, too?”

Winnie reluctantly said, “We did. Lunches and suppers and movies, and those kinds of things. We were friends.”

“So this friendship changed . . . It ended?” said Beatrice. Winnie’s mouth pursed up again and Beatrice added, “Well, clearly it did, since it seemed like you could barely stand being in the same room as Muriel.”

“Muriel simply displayed her true colors,” said Winnie in a disapproving voice. “She’d been giving me signs all along that she didn’t really know how to be a friend, but I’d foolishly ignored them. Finally, she went too far and the friendship was over. It’s as simple as that.”

But things were rarely as simple as that. That Alexandra knew about this rift between the two women just went to show how big it must have been. Alexandra was hardly the kind of daughter someone confided in; she must have observed the end of the friendship. “Alexandra mentioned that the two of you had been friends until the friendship abruptly ended.”

Winnie’s lips tightened more. She hesitated a moment, as if revising her words. “Alexandra never liked me. Not even when she was a child. Anything that Alexandra might say about me is colored by that fact and can’t be treated objectively.”

“Was there a reason that Alexandra didn’t like you?”

“Alexandra,” said Winnie with a cold laugh. “She doesn’t like anyone. Never has.”

“Since you knew Muriel since Alexandra was a child, could you give me a little insight on the relationship between the two of them? What was it like when Alexandra was little?”

“It was the same.” Winnie shrugged a bony shoulder.

Beatrice frowned. “Even when Alexandra was a child? It wasn’t any warmer?”

“Alexandra wasn’t a bubbly, loving child,” said Winnie. “Not all children are. They had a distant relationship from the start and it certainly didn’t get any closer as Alexandra grew older.”

“So there was no big falling out between them?” asked Beatrice.

“No. It was a rift from the get-go.” Winnie had a nonchalant air as she said this.

Beatrice glanced down at her notes again. “Did you see or hear anything after everyone turned in last night?”

Winnie said quickly, “I certainly did! I saw that crazy old woman wandering around.”

“Crazy old woman? You mean Muriel?”

Winnie made a croaking laugh. “No, Muriel wasn’t crazy. Crazy like a fox, maybe. I meant that woman that your crowd brought in.”

Her crowd? “You mean Miss Sissy?”

“That’s the one,” said Winnie.

“She was probably getting up for a drink of water,” said Beatrice.

“She certainly wasn’t. As I said, she was
wandering around
. She wasn’t doing anything productive. She was walking the halls, going up and down the stairs, eating food in the pantry . . .”

Beatrice raised her eyebrows. “So you were wandering around, too?”

“Certainly not!”

“How else would you know that Miss Sissy was in the pantry?”

“Because she’s always in the pantry,” snapped Winnie. “She’s going to wipe us out of food if we don’t keep an eye on her.” A flush crept over her sharp features.

“I can’t think what motive Miss Sissy would have for murdering Muriel Starnes,” Beatrice said.

“It’s simple. She’s crazy. Perhaps she’s a homicidal maniac,” Winnie said primly, tightening her fingers on her black patent leather purse, as if Miss Sissy had designs on her pocketbook.

“Pooh,” said Beatrice. “She might be an insomniac, and she might be a little odd, but she’s no killer.”

Winnie glared at her.

“Who else did you see last night?” asked Beatrice.

“Dot was out of her room a lot. I saw your friend Meadow, too.”

That was news to Beatrice. She’d have sworn Meadow hadn’t stirred all night. “How do you know all these people were walking around?” Beatrice asked. “Weren’t you sleeping?”

“I sleep with the door open,” Winnie said with a shrug.

•   •   •

After Winnie left, Meadow came back into the study. “So you only have Holly Weaver left,” she said. “Unless you think the others are going to demand that everyone is interviewed and you have to interview Posy, Miss Sissy, and me.”

“I’ve already talked with y’all about last night,” Beatrice said. “Although Winnie is sure that Miss Sissy had something to do with the murder.”

Meadow burst out laughing. “Yeah. Sure. Miss Sissy . . . Ha!”

“Since none of us were really even
invited
,” said Beatrice pointedly, still irritated that Meadow had dragged her here, “and didn’t know Muriel personally, I can’t imagine anyone would seriously consider us as suspects. Although Winnie indicated that you were wandering around last night, too, Meadow.”

Meadow continued chuckling. “Miss Sissy! Ha!” She didn’t even blink an eye at the suggestion that she might be a murder suspect.

“Care to share what you were doing up last night?” Beatrice asked, feeling very tired.

“I got up to lock the door,” Meadow said immediately.

“Our bedroom door? I didn’t think it had a lock.”

“It doesn’t. No, I meant the front door. It was unlocked.”

How Meadow thought that a bandit would scale an icy mountain to get to the dilapidated Victorian mansion was a mystery to Beatrice.

“I think I need a break before I talk with Holly,” Beatrice said, rubbing her eyes wearily. “I must not have slept as soundly as I thought I did.”

“Why don’t you go upstairs and put your feet up for a while?” suggested Meadow. “You deserve it. These interviews are hard work.”

“I might just do that,” said Beatrice, her voice sounding very meek to her own ears. “What are you and Posy doing? Will you rest, too?”

“I don’t think so. She and I were saying maybe we’d give this house a good scrubbing. You know? It would look a whole lot better if it were rid of all the cobwebs and dust. I sneeze just looking at the piled-up dust. Posy said she felt the same way, so we’re going to attack the dust bunnies in a little while. I found cleaning supplies in a closet off the kitchen.” Beatrice recognized the fervent look in Meadow’s eyes.

The thought of cleaning made Beatrice even more tired. “Well, good luck. That’s nice of you to do. It seems like a massive job, actually.”

“We won’t be doing it all at once. We’d fall over! No, we’re going to start with the kitchen and library and then we’ll work on other rooms other days,” Meadow explained. “Now head along upstairs and rest before
you
fall over.”

Beatrice trudged up the dimly lit stairs into the dark upstairs hallway. As she turned toward her room, she stopped and frowned. The door to Muriel’s room was cracked.

She strode to the hall bathroom and grabbed a towel to prevent making fingerprints, then pushed the door to Muriel’s room open wider. Everything looked much the same at first glance—Muriel’s body was still in her bed, the room was just as tidy. But on further inspection, it appeared as if someone had been in the room in a hurry. Drawers were still slightly open; a few ruffled papers were visible. And Muriel’s candle remained at the side of her bed. So whoever had been in the room hadn’t been on the errand to retrieve Muriel’s candle. Something seemed different, though. Yet Beatrice wasn’t familiar enough with the room to know what it was.

Beatrice turned to head out. She’d have to see if someone else—maybe Alexandra or Colton—could offer more information about what was ordinarily in Muriel’s room. She spun to see Colton there, and gasped.

“I thought we were leaving this room locked,” he said, frowning. “And I thought you were downstairs still doing the interviews.” He had his hands on his hips and was still wearing the immaculate dark suit, a carefully pressed handkerchief barely visible from the front pocket. He looked as if he might be headed for a corporate board meeting instead of waiting for rescue in a decaying mansion.

“You startled me! I needed a break before I talked to Holly . . . that’s all. I came upstairs to put my feet up until it was time for supper and I saw that Muriel’s door was cracked. You hadn’t noticed that?”

Colton stiffened. “You mean someone broke in here?”

“Could they? Or are there keys to these doors lying around somewhere?”

“Maybe Alexandra knows of some keys, but I don’t.” Colton backed up a little to study the bedroom lock. “As I thought, these locks would be very easy to pick. Someone would only have to stick in almost any object and turn it, and the door would open. We all have keys—someone could easily put in one of their keys and fumble around until the lock turned.”

“Very comforting,” Beatrice said grimly. How were they going to stay safe? How were they going to protect the crime scene?

“So someone—obviously in a hurry before anyone wondered where they were—hurried up here, picked the lock, and entered Muriel’s bedroom,” said Colton, mulling it over. He glanced around the bedroom.

“Do you see anything out of place?” asked Beatrice. “Or anything missing? I can tell that the papers in the desk have been riffled through.”

Colton nodded slowly. “Muriel’s bedside table has been tampered with. Her bottle of sleeping pills is gone.”

“The sleeping pills?” Beatrice said quickly. “That prescription bottle that was beside the bed?” Her heart sank as she turned to look at the nearly empty bedside table.

“Yes. Don’t you remember it there? You’d wondered if maybe she’d deliberately taken an overdose.”

“Is there anything else missing?” Beatrice asked.

Colton glanced around the room, then said cautiously, “Offhand, I can’t tell if anything else is missing. But then, I’m trying to go off my memory from this morning—and I was in such shock that I wasn’t as observant as I usually am.”

“What could someone have been searching for in Muriel’s desk?”

Colton frowned, studying the open drawers and the messy papers. “Maybe Muriel’s will? Notes she made regarding her will? I can’t think what other documents someone would have been interested in.”

“While we’re here, we should at least get the candle,” said Beatrice. She walked over to retrieve it.

Colton and Beatrice left the room. Beatrice handed Colton the candle and used the small towel to lock the door and shut it behind them. “Not that the lock will keep anyone out, clearly, but at least it will slow them down and give us a chance to spot someone trying to break in.”

Colton said quietly, “What do you think we should do now?”

“Should we organize a search for the sleeping pills?” asked Beatrice.

“Those pills will be almost impossible to find,” said Colton. “Think about it. They could shake them out of the pill bottle and put them in their pockets or shoes or purse . . . Unless we’re prepared to search people, it’s going to be futile. Besides, the thief could have put them anywhere in the house—in the curtain seams, behind the cleaning supplies in the kitchen closet . . . It would take us a week to search the house and we still probably wouldn’t find them.”

Beatrice put a hand up to rub her forehead.

“You were on your way to lie down, weren’t you?” asked Colton gently. “If you’re getting a headache, this might be a good time to have that nap.”

“Sure,” said Beatrice glumly. “But what if I don’t wake up again?”

“Just be sure not to have anything to drink.”

•   •   •

Beatrice didn’t end up lying down after all. After putting her feet up, she found that she couldn’t shut her brain off enough to take a nap. Her mind kept whirling, thinking over her interviews, thinking about Muriel. Finally she gave up and wandered back into the library, where she watched with interest as Holly and Dot quilted on the bay window seat in the dying gray light of the day. Posy joined them soon after, holding a bag with an unfinished project of her own.