Thread and Gone (6 page)

Chapter 10

The next morning I spent a little quality time with Juno, who was missing Gram and wondering why I wasn't giving her twenty-four/seven attention.

Her immediate wants were satisfied by a round of “find the catnip mouse” and part of a can of sardines. She promised not to tell Gram about the sardines.

I called Mary and left a message. Could we get together to talk about her family history? Anything she knew or even vaguely remembered might help. I was especially interested in the people who'd lived in her house, but if she knew anything about connections to Scotland or England (I also threw in France, because the note was in French), that might help.

If the embroidery had gotten to French Canada it could have gotten to Maine. The “Canada Road” along the Kennebec River to Quebec had been well traveled since the American Revolution, when Benedict Arnold had (incorrectly) assumed it would be an easy path to attacking the British in Quebec City.

I might not know a lot about British history, but Haven Harbor schools had made sure I knew Maine history. Prints of Benedict Arnold and his weary men, many of them ill with smallpox, trying to make it through heavy December snows to Quebec, had hung in several of the classrooms I'd been imprisoned in during my school days.

Nicole hadn't gotten back to me about the translation of the note. I wouldn't bother her about it until Henri was back home. She'd said it might be a couple of days.

I spent an hour calling the gift shops Mainely Needlepoint worked with to see if they needed to reorder any more balsam pillows or wall hangings. A couple did, so I called Dave Percy and Ob Winslow to ask them to stitch up more of our best sellers. Dave was just about finished with the pillow covers for Skye West and said he'd start on the small pillows next. Ob's wife, Anna, said he couldn't take on any assignments now; he was out fishing on the
Anna Mae
almost every day. Sarah was researching the antique needlepoint, so Katie Titicomb was next on my list. She was in Blue Hill visiting her grandchildren, but said she'd be able to do a few pillows. Pillows didn't bring in as much money as our custom work, but they got our name into the hands of people who might call us later.

I was taking a coffee break on the porch when two police cars headed down to the harbor. A shoplifter? Then the Haven Harbor ambulance followed them. Neither the police cars nor ambulance had their sirens blaring.

I wondered what was wrong. I wasn't worried. No sirens meant no emergency. Maybe someone had slipped on one of the wet docks. Or had chest pains. I hoped no one'd drowned. In a harbor town that happened once in a while, especially when kids, or people ignoring the dangers of rock climbing, slipped on the rocks near the lighthouse and fell into the powerful surf. Being thrown against jagged rocks made swimming difficult, if not impossible. Every few years someone died there. Usually someone from away.

I went back inside and returned to my phone calls. Whatever the problem was, it had nothing to do with me.

Or so I thought.

Chapter 11

The next time I saw a police car it was parked in front of my house.

Sergeant Pete Lambert from the Haven Harbor Police Department was standing on my porch. With him was Ethan Trask, a detective with the Maine State Troopers Homicide Unit. Rob Trask's big brother. The one who'd suggested Rob and Mary bring her needlepoint to me. The one guy in town I wished wasn't married.

“What happened? Is it Gram?” Those two wouldn't be paying me a visit unless the circumstances were dire. Had Gram or Tom had an accident? Was she ill? Before either of the men could open their mouths I'd imagined ten or twelve horrible scenarios.

“Your grandmother's fine, Angie,” said Pete. “But we have a situation we're hoping you can help us with.”

A situation? When Ethan Trask was involved a “situation” usually included a body.

“May we come in?” Ethan asked. Ethan's smiles could make me blush, even if he were commenting on the weather. No danger of that now. This morning he wasn't smiling.

I opened the screen door and pointed toward the living room. Then I remembered my manners. “Iced tea or lemonade?” Gram would have been proud of me.

Then I realized who it must be. If Gram was fine . . . “Is Tom all right?”

“Sit down, Angie,” said Ethan. “We don't need any drinks. And relax. This time your family is fine.”

This time. Two months ago Ethan had been the one to tell me the details about Mama's death.

I nodded. “So. What happened?”

“You know Lenore Pendleton, the lawyer,” said Pete. “You're one of her clients, right?”

“She helped with Mama's estate. I have an appointment with her next week to draw up a will.”

Pete and Ethan looked at each other.

Ethan spoke next. “Afraid you're going to have to find another lawyer, Angie. Lenore Pendleton is dead.”

“Dead!” I was waiting to hear bad news. It never occurred to me it would be about Lenore. “I saw her . . . yesterday.”

“That's what we're here to talk to you about,” said Pete. “We found a note on her desk with your name on it.”

“What did it say?”

“Nothing. Just ‘Angela Curtis,'” said Ethan. “Almost a doodle. The kind of note you write to yourself to help you jog your memory. We're here to find out when you last saw her, or talked with her, and why.”

“She didn't die of natural causes, did she?” I said, looking from one of the men to the other. Neither of them said anything. “Ethan, I'm not stupid. The State of Maine doesn't send a homicide detective to investigate a natural death.”

He hesitated, clearly debating what to tell me.

“No, we don't think she died of natural causes. But it won't be official until after the medical examiner's report. Now, when did you see her last?”

“Yesterday morning, at her office. I got there a little after ten o'clock.”

“Was she alone?”

“A man was leaving as I went in,” I remembered. “Her secretary, Glenda, wasn't there. Lenore said she was on vacation. So, yes. She was alone.”

“Who was the man who left?”

“I didn't know him. He was middle aged, graying, with a bit of a potbelly. Wearing a cheap suit. What I remember most was that he didn't look happy. He slammed the door as he left, and then stomped down the stairs and the walk.” I tried to remember. “He drove off in a beige car. Fast.” I mentally thanked the years I'd spent doing surveillance in Arizona.

Pete and Ethan exchanged looks.

“Do you remember what make the car was? Or its license plate number?” Pete asked.

I shook my head. Unless I was on a “follow and photo” assignment I didn't write down every license plate number I saw.

“How long did you stay at Mrs. Pendleton's office?”

Today Ethan's eyes were even bluer than usual, reflecting his blue shirt. “Fifteen, twenty minutes. Not long.”

“Lawyer-client relations are private. But would you mind telling us why you were there?”

“It wasn't private or personal. I'd been given a piece of antique needlepoint by a client. You know about that, Ethan; you were the one who referred Rob and Mary to me.”

“Mary Clough's needlepoint?”

Pete looked up from his note taking.

“Yes. I thought the stitching might be valuable. I asked Lenore to keep it in her safe while I was investigating it.”

“Did she agree to do that?”

“Yes. She agreed to put it in her safe.”

“Did she know it belonged to Mary Clough?”

“I told her it was Mary's. Lenore promised she wouldn't let anyone have it except Mary or me.”

“So if anyone else came to her office and asked her for it, she wouldn't have given it to them. She wouldn't have opened her safe.”

“No. She wouldn't have.” I looked from one to the other. “What happened to Lenore? What has this to do with Mary's needlepoint?”

“How many people knew you were taking the needlepoint to Lenore's office?”

I tried to be patient. “Mary Clough, and your brother, Rob. Sarah Byrne. Ruth Hopkins and Dave Percy. Oh, and I told Gram when I talked with her on the phone yesterday morning.” I hesitated. “Of course, any of those people could have told someone else.” Like Rob had told his buddies. But Rob was Ethan's brother. No reason to call attention to him.

“No one else?”

“Who else would care?” I said. “Now, would you tell me what happened?”

“We don't know exactly,” said Pete. “This morning Rob went to Lenore Pendleton's office with a friend, intending to show his friend the needlepoint. They found the door to Lenore's house unlocked and Lenore lying on the floor of her office. Dead.”

Chapter 12

“How was she killed?” I had to ask.

“We won't know officially until the medical examiner tells us. But, unofficially, she'd been hit on the head,” Ethan said. “Multiple times.”

“Hard,” seconded Pete. “Probably with a marble bookend. It had blood on it, so it's going to the lab.”

I cringed a little. How could anyone do that? Or, more correctly,
why
would anyone do that? “When did it happen?”

“The medical examiner will have to make that call. For now we're guessing early this morning,” said Pete.

“Or very late last night,” Ethan added.

“How was she dressed?” I asked.

Pete and Ethan exchanged glances.

“She was wearing a nightgown and robe. An open box of pastries was in her kitchen. We're thinking she might have been having a late snack when she had an unexpected guest. It may have been a robbery gone bad,” said Ethan. “Her safe was open, and empty.”

“Empty? Everything was gone?” I repeated.

“Not everything. Files were scattered on the floor,” explained Pete.

“Was a padded envelope among the files? Sarah's embroidery was in a padded envelope.”

Ethan shook his head. “Nothing like that. No padded envelopes. No needlepoint. Glenda Pierce, Lenore Pendleton's secretary, has agreed to go through the remaining files to see if any are missing. But the needlepoint was gone, and so was jewelry Glenda said Lenore kept in the safe. Most of the jewelry was Lenore's; a few pieces belonged to one of her clients. Glenda's putting together a list of the jewelry that was there.”

Glenda wasn't having a relaxing vacation week after all.

I tried to focus on Lenore's death, but all I could think of was that the needlepoint I'd promised to keep safe had disappeared. It was my fault. I should have kept it in my own house.

“Was the lock on the door broken? Or the window?”

“No,” said Pete, although Ethan looked at him sharply.

I'd been able to help the police before, so Pete sometimes told me details civilians shouldn't know. Ethan didn't approve.

“So she knew whoever killed her. No woman would have opened the door wearing her nightclothes if she hadn't known the person outside.”

“Angie, we're not asking for your advice on this case. We wanted to clarify your connection to Lenore,” said Ethan. “So, you didn't see her or talk to her after you left her office at about ten-thirty yesterday morning?”

I shook my head. “No. Did Lenore handle criminal cases?”

Pete was more flexible about answering. But he wasn't in charge. He was with the Haven Harbor Police. He might help out in a murder investigation, but Ethan, with the state police, was the boss on homicide investigations. “None I know of. Her specialty was family law—wills, divorces, settling estates, adoptions. She'd been in town for . . . how many years do you think, Ethan?”

“She was here when I was in high school. I remember going to her office to have her husband notarize a document for me. Charlie ran her office in those days.” Ethan paused, figuring. “So she's been here close to twenty years. She must have opened her office right after she passed the bar.” Ethan had grown up in Haven Harbor. That's why murders in town were assigned to him.

“Her husband used to be her secretary?” I asked.

“You could put it that way,” Ethan agreed.

“Lenore told me she was separated. That she'd filed for divorce,” I said.

“Yeah. She kicked Charlie out two or three years ago.” Pete looked over at Ethan as if for confirmation. “Story I heard was he'd lost a lot of her money when the stock market went down a while back. Started drinking about then, too. We picked him up a few times for a D and D.”

“Drunk and disorderly,” Ethan added.

I nodded. I knew what a D and D was.

“Charlie's a nasty drunk.” Pete shook his head. “He's spent a couple of nights with us.”

“Where's he now?” I asked. I didn't know the man, but he sounded like a logical suspect.

“We'll be checking on that. Last I heard he'd rented a place out of town and was looking for work.”

A woman I'd known and respected had been killed in her own office. If Lenore's killer hadn't taken any files, he or she must have been looking for the jewelry in her safe. The padded envelope might have looked as though it contained more jewelry. Someone looking to fence jewelry wouldn't know about needlepoint—or care about it. They might toss it in a Dumpster once they saw it.

“I have photos of Mary's needlepoint,” I said, getting up and opening my file on Mary Clough. “If the jewelry was valuable enough to be kept in a safe, I assume you'll be looking for it. I hope you find the needlework, too. I can't imagine an average thief thinking embroidery was valuable.”

“Beats me why they took it,” Pete agreed, taking the pictures of the needlepoint and the packet and letter. “But thanks for this. We'll add it to the list of missing jewelry Glenda's working on and send the descriptions to the usual pawnshops and jewelers. Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky.”

“You don't sound optimistic,” I pointed out.

“The guy who did this may not have planned to kill anyone. But he did, and that's where the focus of our investigation will be—on finding whoever killed Lenore Pendleton. Finding the missing jewelry is important mainly because it might lead us to the guy who did this,” explained Ethan.

I wasn't surprised. He was a homicide detective.

“It didn't look like a professional job. And Lenore was hit by something in her office—she wasn't shot or knifed. So it was a crime of opportunity. The crime scene folks are down at her office now, checking for DNA and fingerprints. And the ME's report will help. At this point, we're just establishing a timeline.” Ethan got up. “Thanks for the pictures of the needlepoint, and for telling us about the man you saw leaving Lenore's office. Whoever he was, if he was that upset, he might have returned later.”

Pete turned as the two men headed for the door. “If you think of anything else that might help us, you know where we are.”

I nodded. I did. In the two months I'd been home I'd been all too closely in touch with both of them.

They were almost to their car when I did think of something else. I ran down the slate walkway to the street. “Pete?”

He turned toward me. “Yes?”

“Are you going to tell Mary Clough about this?”

She'd be upset. And I'd rather be the one to tell her than have her hear through the grapevine, or from Rob. Law enforcement people weren't supposed to talk about cases, but word gets around fast in small towns. Probably half the people in Haven Harbor had already heard about Lenore's murder. And, after all, Rob was Ethan's little brother.

“She's not on the top of our list. We don't expect she'd break into Lenore Pendleton's office and kill her to get her own property back,” said Pete with a small smile.

“Then it's okay if I tell her? I feel responsible for her losing her needlepoint.”

He shrugged. “Up to you. But it was just sewing. I'm more worried about the reactions of whoever's jewelry was stolen.”

Just sewing. But what if it were sewing worth a small fortune? Or the down payment on a lobster boat?

I had to tell Mary what had happened.