Quilt Trip: A Southern Quilting Mystery (8 page)

“I don’t have a thing to do with it!” Meadow replied indignantly.

“Not you,” Colton said.

Meadow’s eyes were wide open. “You know who the murderer is?”

Colton shook his head impatiently. “I’m not saying another thing about it.” He pressed his lips into a thin line.

Meadow shrugged. Beatrice decided she would talk to Colton alone as soon as they could arrange it.

Dot said, “Has anybody even
tried
to walk down the driveway?”

Winnie said sourly, “You can
see
the ice on the driveway. It’s a sheet of ice that must be at least an inch thick. We can’t walk on it. Unless you have skates in your car.” She let out a snort.

Dot continued on in a chipper voice, “Well, I’m going to give it a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Besides, I’ve got some fat to cushion a fall . . . unlike you skinny minnies.” She was almost as sunny as Meadow, thought Beatrice.

“If you’re determined to break something, go ahead,” Alexandra said with a languid shrug.

Posy said quickly, “Oh, Dot, I wish you wouldn’t. There’s no reason to get hurt. My husband must have a group out searching for us now. I think it’s better if we just sit tight and wait to be rescued. It’s freezing out there—I know there hasn’t been any melting.”

“There might not even be bandages here!” said Meadow. Her eyes were agog.

Dot was already getting to her feet. “Pooh. Let me try it. I don’t have anything else to do. And who knows? Maybe I can get down to the bottom of the driveway.” She reached for her navy blue puffy coat. “Are y’all coming out to cheer me on?”

“I’ve no desire to watch you break your neck,” Winnie said.

“I’m planning on giving myself a manicure with polish I found in the upstairs bathroom,” Alexandra said without looking at them.

Colton said, “I highly recommend that you not attempt walking down that icy driveway, Dot.” But he was already carefully putting his long wool overcoat on. Meadow, Posy, and Beatrice followed Dot outside. Miss Sissy brought up the rear, muttering, “Foolishness!”

The small group stood on the covered porch, shivering as Dot carefully made her way down the wooden stairs, slipping several times and tightening her grip on the underside of the railing, since the banister was also covered with a sheet of ice.

“One foot in front of the other,” Dot said slowly. Her tongue was stuck out in concentration.

They watched as she scooted past the parked cars.With both arms held straight out from her body for balance, Dot slowly put a foot down where the driveway’s steep slope started. And it flew out from under her.

Dot slammed to the icy surface, to the gasps of the group behind her.

“Dot! Are you okay? Dot!” called Meadow.

Dot slowly and experimentally moved her arms and legs until she winced. “I’ve messed up my right ankle,” she said in exasperation.

Beatrice carefully stepped out onto the ice and promptly fell to one knee.

“Beatrice!” Posy gasped.

“I’m all right,” said Beatrice, trying to sound positive instead of positively grouchy. She surveyed the situation. “I think I’ll scoot over to you on my rump, Dot. If I stand up, I’ll just fall over again. Even if I
did
manage to walk over to you, I might make us both fall down when I tried to give you a hand.”

“Won’t you end up sopping wet from the ice?” asked Meadow.

“Maybe a little damp. I don’t know. But it’s better than falling on the hard ice. Besides, I’m getting heartily sick of these clothes. I’m on the point of rooting through Muriel’s clothes for something to borrow. Dot, how’s that ankle? Is it swelling up?” Beatrice scooted toward her.

Dot peered at her ankle. “I don’t think so. But it sure does hurt.”

“Maybe it’s so cold that it’s keeping her ankle from swelling up,” Meadow said breathlessly.

Beatrice finally made it over to Dot and studied her ankle. “Maybe it’s just sprained,” she said. “It would be blowing up really quickly if it was broken. Do you think you can move toward the house? Would it help if I tried to pull you?”

Dot sighed. “You know, I think I can scoot like you were doing. I’ll try to use my arms. I’m not sure you’re strong enough to pull me anyway.”

That was good. Beatrice wasn’t sure she was strong enough, either.

After a few minutes of muffled exclamations, imprecations, grunts, and groans, Dot made it to the side of the house. Meadow and Colton helped support Dot from both sides as she hopped on one foot up the stairs to the porch. Beatrice followed slowly behind.

They helped Dot back to the library and pulled up a chair close to the fire so she could get warmed up.

“I think we need to keep her foot elevated.” Beatrice frowned as she tried to remember rudimentary first aid. “Does anybody have ibuprofen or anything?”

Posy had ibuprofen in her purse and Meadow ran for a glass of water.

“What else are we supposed to do for a sprained or broken ankle?” asked Beatrice, tapping her finger against her chin.

“Aren’t you supposed to wrap it? Something like that?” asked Dot, staring down at the offending ankle.

“There should be plenty of cloth around,” said Alexandra, who was still applying polish to her fingernails. “I’m sure you could find something to make a bandage out of.”

“You can probably roll those blue jeans up a little on that leg and put the bandage underneath the pant leg,” said Posy.

“You’re supposed to put ice on it,” Winnie said in a snarky voice.

“It was ice that put me in this mess to begin with!” Dot howled.

“After you warm up, why don’t you go upstairs and lie down for a while?” Posy said soothingly. “I know it always does me a world of good to have a nap.”

“Maybe I’ll do that,” muttered Dot. “As long as somebody can help me up the stairs.”

“I’ll even bring you supper in bed!” Meadow said with a clap of her hands.

•   •   •

Supper was hardly worthy of the flourish that Meadow later served Dot’s meal with—it consisted of buttery lasagna noodles with no sauce. But Dot seemed pleased at everyone fussing over her. Beatrice got the impression that Dot wasn’t ordinarily the center of attention.

Posy had brought Dot’s current quilt in progress upstairs so she could work on it whenever she got bored. “How is your ankle doing?” she asked, brow wrinkled in concern.

“Oh, I expect I’ll live,” Dot said, then covered her mouth with her hand. “Oops. Not the best joke in this house.”

Meadow said, “It hits too close to home, doesn’t it? And apparently we can’t even lock our doors, is that right?”

“Some of the doors have locks,” said Beatrice. “Not ours. But even the doors with locks are easy to pick.”

“Which makes it pointless!” Meadow was huffily indignant again.

Posy said, “I can’t really see why anyone would want to murder anyone else here.” She blushed. “Not that I can really see why anyone would have wanted to kill Muriel, of course. She seemed very nice.”

But she really hadn’t. At least—well, she was nice enough yesterday afternoon. But it was easy to see how she might have gotten on someone’s bad side. And apparently she’d been much worse as a younger woman.

“Meadow, I can’t think anyone would be brave enough to try to break into our room to kill one or both of us,” Beatrice said reasonably. “In fact, we’re all sharing a room with someone else. Posy is with Miss Sissy, who doesn’t appear to sleep. Dot, you’re still sharing a room with Holly, right?”

“That’s right,” Dot said gloomily. “Except that Holly sleeps like the dead.” She covered her mouth again. “Oops.”

Everyone was jumpy that night. When the women walked downstairs to eat their own buttery lasagna noodles, the dining room was full of awkward mentions of murder. They all appeared nervous about the night ahead.

Finally Beatrice was ready to escape. She cleaned her plate as best she could, then said, “I’m ready to call it a day.”

Meadow raised her eyebrows. “It’s so early, though, isn’t it?” She tried to look at her watch in the low beam of the candle. “It’s not even eight o’clock.”

“You could help me explore Muriel’s wine and liquor cabinet,” Colton said with a small smile. “I’m planning on having another glass or two to help me fall asleep.” He motioned to the large wineglass near him.

“There’s nothing else to really do, is there?” asked Meadow.

“Quilting. We could quilt,” Posy said quickly.

“I think that’s an excellent idea for y’all,” said Beatrice. “But I’m not nearly at your skill level and I need a lot more light for quilting than the rest of you.”

“I found a deck of cards,” said Dot, pulling the cards out of her slacks pocket and holding them out in a chubby hand. “You could play solitaire. That’s what I’ve been doing.”

“Thanks, Dot. I might take you up on that another time, but I don’t feel like playing cards right now,” said Beatrice.

“There are gobs of books here,” said Alexandra. She was lying listlessly back in a chair and didn’t seem inclined to check out any of the books herself.

“But they’re all dusty and ancient and dull,” said Winnie. She made a face.

The books didn’t look particularly appealing to Beatrice. “I don’t think I’ll read tonight. I think I might try to heat up that flatiron and press those squares.”

A couple of hours later, Beatrice reflected that heating up the flatiron in the fire and using it to press the folds in the squares had given her new respect for her ancestors. It had worked just fine, and now she had a number of crisply pressed squares. She had an inkling of what she needed to do with them next, but wanted to confirm it with Posy first.

“Am I sewing the pieces together by matching up two triangles from separate squares?” she asked.

“That’s right. You’re matching up the corners and stitching together the triangles. Oh, it’s going to look lovely. Cathedral windows are a favorite of mine and you always do such a nice job, Beatrice.”

Posy was always wonderful at making Beatrice feel better about her quilting abilities. “Then I guess I’ll sew fabric into the diamond that the two triangles in the middle form.”

“You sure will. But you’ll want to pin down those other triangles first—the ones that aren’t in the center. That will keep them out of your way as you work. We’ll need to measure the diamond to see how much fabric we’ll need, too.”

“Thanks, Posy,” Beatrice said in a heartfelt tone. “I think I’d go batty if I didn’t have anything to work on here.”

“You have the case, though,” reminded Posy. “You do such a good job investigating.”

“Yes, but I can’t do that
all
day or else I’d be next in line to be murdered,” she answered dryly. She couldn’t hold back a yawn. “I’m actually feeling a lot more worn out than I should be at this hour. I’m going ahead and turning in.”

“Won’t I wake you up when I come in to get ready for bed?” Meadow asked with a worried frown.

“I don’t think even an apocalyptic event could wake me up tonight,” said Beatrice. “I’m exhausted.” But she did still want to find out what it was that Colton was so suspicious about. “Uh . . . Colton. Could I see you in the study for a minute before I go upstairs? I wanted to follow up on something from our interview earlier.”

He gave her a sharp look. “Okay. Sure.”

Colton followed Beatrice to the study. She closed the door behind him. “I didn’t actually want to ask you about anything from our interview.”

“I gathered that,” he said, smiling. The faint scent of his cologne reminded Beatrice of her father.

“When you were talking to Meadow earlier, you said something about having an idea who might be behind Muriel’s death,” Beatrice said.

Colton continued staring steadily at her.

“Aren’t you going to tell me who you suspect?” Honestly, this was the most secretive group of people ever, Beatrice thought.

“No, I don’t think so,” Colton replied, appraising her coolly. “For one thing, it’s only a suspicion, as I mentioned. I believe we’ll do much more harm than good if we throw out wild accusations against people without any facts to back them up.”

“How are you proposing to get those facts? It’s not as if the house is full of hidden cameras or anything. You can’t check the security tape. We can’t run a forensics-style investigation.”

“I think,” said Colton quietly, “at some point I’ll simply ask her to explain herself. I think the reaction will be most telling.”

“At some point. So not tonight?”

“Like you, I’m pretty tired. I’m going to finish my wine and turn in for the night. I’ll sleep on how to proceed and will have a plan tomorrow morning.”

“Understandable,” Beatrice said grudgingly. “But—one thing. When you do decide how you want to proceed, could you let me know? I want to make sure you’re approaching it in a safe way.”

“Of course,” said Colton, a little stiffly.

•   •   •

Beatrice was truly exhausted. Under the circumstances, she decided as she stared toward the ceiling after waking when Meadow had come into the room, it was amazing that any of them could sleep. When Meadow had gone to bed, she’d whispered that she was sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink. Yet there she was, snoring away in the other twin bed.

Beatrice found that she woke up at every small noise. There were larger noises, too—squeaking doors as various people visited the restroom. She heard Miss Sissy muttering and cackling to herself at one point, along with Posy’s hushed voice saying, “Come along, Miss Sissy. Don’t you want to lie down and rest for a while?” She thought that maybe the next night, if they were all still here, she should offer to switch off with Posy so that maybe Posy could get a little sleep instead of dealing with her resident insomniac roommate.

And so, at breakfast the next morning Beatrice wasn’t feeling as chipper as she ordinarily would. There wasn’t much food left in the pantry that could even be considered in the realm of breakfast food. Beatrice was currently staring with disinterest at the smattering of grits on her plate.

“Eat up!” Meadow commanded. “It’s hot food, Beatrice. And there isn’t much to go around, so you should be grateful for what you have.”

“I know.” Beatrice let out a small sigh. “It’s not that I mind grits—and I’m glad for something warm to eat, too. I just usually have other things in my grits.”

“What? Like shrimp, you fancy thing?” asked Meadow.

“Well, like bacon. Or grated cheese. Or maybe a pat of butter.”

“We’ve totally run out of those things,” Meadow said, gulping down a big spoonful of grits.

Posy said, “Beatrice, I opened the canned salmon and put salmon in my grits. Would you like some? A few of us have been sharing it.”

“Is it good?” asked Beatrice doubtfully.

“We think so. If you like shrimp and grits, you might like this.”

She forked out a little bit of the salmon, mixed it into the grits, and tried a bite. “Mmm. Not bad, actually. And salmon is good for us, of course. I feel like I need a shot in the arm, and this might help provide that.”

“Didn’t you sleep well last night?” asked Meadow, surprised. “I thought you were so tired.”

“I was. But it was harder to sleep than I thought it would be,” Beatrice said.

Winnie took the last bite of her grits and salmon and sighed at the sight of her empty plate. “I don’t think I slept one bit last night. Not one little bit.”

“You at least closed your door last night, though, didn’t you?” asked Beatrice. Surely the woman wasn’t going to just leave her bedroom door wide open with a murderer running around.

“No,” Winnie said scornfully. “I left it wide open and put a welcome mat for the murderer right outside the bedroom door.”

Beatrice ignored her. “Holly, how did Dot sleep last night?”

Holly winced guiltily. “I’m not really sure. I’m afraid I put my headphones on again. I feel pretty safe with Dot in there, so I don’t worry about it. But one time I did hear Dot. It sounded like she was having a nightmare or something . . . lots of moaning and groaning and thrashing around. I woke her up and then went right back to sleep again.”

“Sounds like that ankle was bothering her in her sleep,” Meadow said with a knowing nod. “Probably causing her the bad dreams.”

“Unless, of course, she was having nightmares about being murdered in her bed,” Alexandra said in a dry voice. “Which, according to Beatrice, is a total possibility.”

“I think I’ll run breakfast up to her,” said Meadow. “Was she awake when you came down, Holly?”

“No, she sure wasn’t. She didn’t stir at all, not even when I left.”

Beatrice’s breath caught in her throat.

Meadow didn’t seem at all concerned. “Well, it’s been a while now. Surely she’s up by now. I’ll bring her up a plate . . . She’ll be wanting hearty food on a cold morning like this.”

Unless she was dead, thought Beatrice grimly. “I’ll go with you, Meadow.”

Meadow raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Don’t bother. I’ve got it, Beatrice. You haven’t even finished your salmon and grits.”

“Well, I’ve . . . I’ve got to go upstairs anyway.”

“There’s a restroom downstairs, you know,” Meadow said helpfully.

“Yes. Thank you. I do know that. Look, I’m going to come upstairs.”

“Suit yourself.” Meadow glared at her.

As they headed up the stairs, Meadow said, “What was that all about?”

“It just occurred to me that Dot Giles might not have a pulse, Meadow. That’s all,” Beatrice said with asperity. She tried to keep her voice low since voices definitely carried in the drafty old house.

Meadow tripped up a step. “Ohh. Really? Do you think so?”

“No, I don’t
think
so, but I wanted to make sure for myself that it wasn’t the case.”

When they reached the top of the stairs, Meadow paused and said, “Well, she’s not the only one who didn’t come downstairs, you know. There were others. It’s not like there’s anything else to do around here—I guess people decided they may as well sleep in.”

“Who else? Who else didn’t come down for breakfast?”

“Let’s see. I’m sure Miss Sissy didn’t. She’d have eaten those grits before you’d had a chance to complain about them.”

That was true. “Anybody else?”

“Colton,” said Meadow. “But then, I guess he did say he was really tired before he turned in last night. He went to bed really early, Beatrice.”

“So shouldn’t he already be up?” asked Beatrice.

Meadow nodded slowly. “So we should check on Miss Sissy and Colton, then?”

“After we’ve checked on Dot Giles.”

Beatrice gently tapped on Dot’s door. She felt tremendous relief when Dot called out in a sleepy voice, “Come in.”

“We’ve brought you breakfast, Dot,” Meadow said cheerily. “Hot grits! But you have to eat them now or they’ll be cold grits, which is somewhat less appealing.”

Dot grinned at her and struggled to push herself up in the bed. “Cold or hot, I’m a grits fan. Can’t go wrong with grits.”

Meadow said, “If only these were my favorite grits. Garlic cheese grits! But I couldn’t find any garlic and the cheese Muriel had in the fridge was a bit moldy. So I gave up on the idea.”

Beatrice cleared her throat. “Sorry we woke you up, Dot. We were also checking in to make sure you’re okay.”

“Oh, I’m not at all upset that you woke me up,” Dot said. “It’s so bright outside that I must have really slept in. I guess I was even more worn out than I thought I was.”

“Having an accident can take it out of you,” said Meadow.

“How do you feel now?” asked Beatrice.

Dot considered the question, gingerly moving her leg around. “I think it’s a little less sensitive than it was last night.”

“But you’re not putting any pressure on it,” said Meadow. “The real test will be when you try walking on it.”

Beatrice shifted restlessly, thinking about Miss Sissy and Colton. “Meadow, why don’t we go ahead and leave Dot to her breakfast?”

Meadow glanced quickly over at her. “Good idea. Enjoy, Dot!”

They gently closed the door behind them. Beatrice said quietly, “Thank goodness she’s okay. I was really worried about her when Holly said she didn’t stir this morning.”

“I know. But like I said, when you hurt yourself, just dealing with the pain really
can
make you exhausted. I broke my arm once and I napped all day long.” Meadow paused. “Who are we checking on next?”

“Let’s see how Miss Sissy is doing. Although she’s probably simply worn out from wandering around the house all night. Poor Posy had to chase her down and plead with her to go back to bed.”

“Eventually she gave up trying, though,” said Meadow. “At least that’s what Posy said over breakfast. She decided to let Miss Sissy wander around since she wasn’t making a lot of noise and waking everyone up.”