Wild Goose Chase (7 page)

Lark peered into my eyes. “You might have been the last person to see her alive. Do you want to go on camera?”

“TV?” I took a step back to break the intensity of her gaze. “No.”

Freddy interceded. “Come on, Lark. Give the girl a break. She’s here trying to forget the events of the day.”

Lark interrupted him. “How about getting me a drink, Freddy?”

He looked at me. I waved him off. I could handle Lark. He headed for the bar.

Lark said, “Your shop is Quilter Paradiso, right? That’s a great place. I don’t sew much, but since I started this job, I’ve become quite the fabriholic, buying tons of fabric I’ll never use.”

“You’re not a quilter?” I asked.

Lark reared back and laughed. Her laugh was a very girly giggle, at odds with her sophisticated exterior. “Can you keep a secret? I can’t sew, let alone quilt. I’m a journalist, although I’ve been working as a television personality lately.”

“So how long have you been in this job?”

“Five years.”

“Is that how you met Claire?”

A frown crossed Lark’s pretty features quickly, and then she composed herself. “Yes, she had a great interest in television.”

How many pies did Claire have her fingers in? Was that what they had been arguing about? I could see Claire as a hostess of a quilting show. If she had lived, that might have been something she would have done.

Lark looked around the room, playing idly with her earrings. They were large gold hoops, the size of a salad plate. She wore a gold necklace with a diamond at the neck and several charm bracelets. Rings, but no wedding ring. Her jewelry and her clothes looked expensive. A cable TV hostessing job must pay better than I thought.

She sat down and leaned toward me. “How about the local news? I’ve got contacts in the local market. I’m sure I could get air time. We could probably get on the local early morning show, talking about Claire.”

I shook my head vigorously. Lark settled back in the chair, with a pretty pout on her face. She turned away from me. Her eyes lit on Freddy’s back. He was leaning against the bar.

“What’s he doing up there? Schmoozing the cute bartender?”

When I didn’t answer, she asked, “Is your shop doing well?”

I hesitated, then shook my head. “Not great. In fact, I’m looking for a buyer.”

The noise in the bar suddenly abated as though the air had been sucked from the room. I felt eyes staring in my direction and looked up to see Myra standing at my elbow.

Lark stood abruptly. “My condolences,” she said to Myra. “Tell Freddy never mind the drink.” She took a step back and was immediately swallowed up by the crowd.

Lark’s fascination with Claire didn’t extend to Myra, for some reason.

Myra had changed into navy pants with a pale-blue silk blouse. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been covered in blood. The only sign of upset was the slight tremor in her hand. I pulled out a chair for her to sit down next to me.

“Hello,” she said quietly, twisting the colorful bracelet on her arm.

“How are you?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“If you need to talk,” I said, “I’d be willing. After all, I was there with you. They say talking helps. We could get a more private table …”

“Ha!” The syllable burst out of her; her eyes were flashing with anger. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Why would I want to
talk
about what happened today?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. I felt singed by her tone of voice. I didn’t dare look around, but figured every eye must be on us again. I shrunk against the seat back.

She continued her rant. I fought off the urge to jump up and leave. “Do you want me to sear every detail in my brain, guarantee myself a lifetime of nightmares? Ensure that I never forget a single detail? So I can always remember what Claire looked like, lying in her own blood? No thanks. Give me good old-fashioned repression. People talk way too much.”

Her words stung. I sipped my drink, watching her over the top of the glass. I would cut her some slack. She was grieving; I knew people grieved differently. Dad went fishing; Kevin sought solace in his marriage, sublimating his own personality so much as to disappear; my brother Sean threw himself into his work, building stage sets at twice his normal speed; and Tony, the oldest, sought solitude in the desert, coming home every couple of months to do laundry before going back to categorizing succulents.

Where was Freddy? I could use his silliness right about now.

“Great jewelry,” I said, trying to shift focus.

Myra looked down, and stopped twisting. Her shoulders relaxed. “I made it from the buttons we’ve used in our projects over the years.”

“Buttons? They look like beads.”

I took her wrist in my hand and examined the bangle. It caught the light, and the buttons glittered.

Myra took her hand back. “Nope, I glued them on a Bakelite bracelet I found at a flea market. All of them came from Claire’s button collection.” Her eyes misted.

My throat closed up. “Detective Sanchez thinks I killed Claire,” I blurted, to avoid telling her that every little thing would be fraught with meaning now that Claire was gone. I faced that feeling every day when I went into the shop.

Myra looked shocked. “That’s crazy. Why would he think that?”

I looked around the bar. The jukebox was playing loudly but I wanted to make sure no one heard me. I moved my chair closer.

“He found an empty rotary cutter package in my backpack,” I whispered.

Myra sneered. “So what? Does he seriously think you would open a new cutter, kill someone, then put the cardboard in your backpack and go back up to her room and find her body?”

“Guess so.” Out loud, that scenario sounded ridiculous. I relaxed against the back of the chair, feeling the plush sink beneath my shoulders.

Myra leaned in and said, “Dewey, it was obviously an accident. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and cutting fabric. I told her that was not the way to use that blade. Did she listen? Of course not.”

Myra’s conviction that Claire had just had an accident was beginning to calm my nerves. I hadn’t realized how much Sanchez’s accusations had unsettled me.

“I’m glad you don’t think I killed Claire.”

Myra laid her hand on my shoulder. “I know you didn’t, Dewey.”

A geeky guy with wire rims and a small goatee appeared next to Myra’s chair and insisted she come to his table and meet his wife. I told Myra to go ahead. I needed time to think.

“I can see Claire,” Freddy slurred, bumping into the table as he finally returned, slopping his drink on the table. I looked up sharply before realizing he was talking metaphorically. He must have had several shots at the bar. He pointed across the room.

“She always held court at that corner table over there. People came to her with their questions. She was like … a godfather, no godmother. The Godmother of Quilting.”

I got an image of Claire behind a big desk, dispensing favors. “She made offers people couldn’t refuse?”

He grimaced at my awful Brando. “No more,” Freddy continued morosely. “The balance has shifted.”

I’d had enough drama for one day. “I’m out of here,” I said, pushing up from the table and grabbing my QP tote. I looked around to see who I needed to say goodbye to. I couldn’t see Eve. Myra was deep in conversation far across the room. Lark tried to catch my eye, but I looked away quickly. I told Freddy I’d see him tomorrow and left.

Outside, it wasn’t dark yet. I still needed to go to the shop; I felt a pang of guilt that I’d been out of touch so long. There was the question of missing inventory that I still needed to figure out. A new owner, especially a corporate one, would insist that all the store accounts were reconciled.

Was the next owner of Quilter Paradiso in that bar? I hadn’t come right out and asked anyone to buy my shop but I might have met the potential buyer tonight. It was going to take more investigation, but I felt like I’d made some headway. At least I knew more vendors by name than I had this morning.

I started down the sidewalk toward the garage where I’d parked my car.

Suddenly, Eve cut across the path in front of me. She was talking angrily into her cell. I had to stop short to avoid running into her.

“That was money we needed,” I heard her say as she held the phone out in front of her, walkie-talkie style.

Like so many people, she seemed to forget that her cell conversation was audible. She passed in front of me again, nearly tripping me. I tried to gauge where she was going next.

“I want you to come home now. You need to get help, J.”

This conversation was obviously a private one, despite the fact that it was being held in a very public place. I held back, resigned to waiting her out, hoping she would get off the phone soon.

“Claire’s gone now, honey, so you don’t need to worry about the money,” Eve said.

What were they talking about? Freddy’d said Claire lent money to Justine. I’d seen her outside the room. She could have been paying Claire back. Had Justine been the last person to see her alive?

“When will you be home?” Eve shouted, as she wheeled around heading right for me. Behind her the sun was setting, the few clouds streaking the sky pink and red.

Eve walked quickly past without registering that I was in front of her. My path to the parking garage was suddenly clear and I took advantage, dodging past Eve and heading up the concrete walk toward the structure. The last thing I heard was Eve’s exhortation to Justine.

“Do not miss the fashion show, whatever you do.”

The small gravel parking
lot behind Quilter Paradiso was full; I backed out and parked on the street in front. The shop was still busy, despite the fact that we were scheduled to close in a few minutes, at eight.

I stepped outside my car, breathing in the cool air, trying to get the echoes of Eve’s phone conversation and the sad events at the quilt show out of my head. The sun had finished setting, leaving the sky the color and texture of navy blue velour.

Lights from inside the shop glowed invitingly. The neon “Open” sign sent colorful contrails streaking down the glass. The front window was dominated by one of Ina’s signature Lone Star quilts. Neighborhood people often dropped in on their way home from errands to tell us how much they enjoyed our ever-changing window displays. I felt a swell of pride, not for me, but for my mother. This was the shop she had created. I was just trying to keep up and falling short constantly.

Inside, I could see customers milling about, some already carrying their bags, others waiting at the cutting table, still others fondling the fabric. Vangie, Tess, and the rest of the staff had everything under control.

I’d used my quota of social energy at the bar, so I stuck to the sidewalk and went around to the back of the store, running my fingers over the old masonry siding as I walked. My great-great-great grandfather, determined to recreate his Boston childhood, had shipped these bricks overland. The shop stood out from the Spanish-style stucco architecture of the rest of the block. It was perfect for a quilt shop, although the traditional feel ended when the customer walked in the door and got a glimpse of the brightly colored fabrics. California twisted tradition, Mom had called it.

Of course a new owner would change all that. I felt a twinge of doubt. Was I doing the right thing in looking for a buyer? Kym was leaving me no choice.

I entered through the back door, nodding to a customer as she opened the door to my left that led to the bathroom; the door to the right opened into the classroom. A second classroom was in the loft space. My office was on the other side of the bathroom, and a kitchen was beyond that. From there, it was a short distance to the store’s main space.

I could hear Vangie singing “My Boyfriend’s Back.” That meant a customer had bought six yards or more of fabric to use for the backing of a quilt. Vangie, despite having just turned twenty-one, was an aficionado of sixties music. She liked to refer to herself as a hippie.

Shrieks of giggling filtered back to me as Vangie hit the chorus. “Hey now, hey now, you’ve bought a back.” I crossed over to my desk, listening to the joviality, but not being part of it. This was a familiar feeling, being an outsider in what was supposed to be my shop. I felt a flare of anger at my mother for leaving me in this position. I quickly stuffed it down. It wasn’t her fault she had died too early.

Entering my office, I felt my focus shift. The talk at the bar had brought home the fact that Mom had been right about computerizing the sales and accounting systems. I’d spent the last six months entering every item we had for sale, every bill we owed, every invoice we sent out into the laptop. It had been a huge job, and I had finished last week—except for one outstanding invoice.

When I’d put the store accounts into our new software, I’d found checks being paid out to a company named WGC, without a corresponding bill of sale. I knew this much from my basic college accounting class—expenses and outlays had to be the same. There was no documentation of what we’d purchased from this company. I’d asked Vangie to get copies of all of the checks made out to WGC, thinking they might reveal information about the company. On my desk was a folder with her handwriting on the outside.

Attempts I’d made to contact the company had not panned out. There was no phone number to call or any explanation of the charges on the monthly statement. Just a new bill each month, coming from a post office box in San Jose.

I fanned out the seven checks. More than $3,750 worth of payments to WGC. Under the old system, there was no reconciliation between receiving and accounts payable, so this kind of discrepancy would never have come to light.

The first check was signed by my mother, the rest by Kym. I turned the checks over and squinted at the blurry endorsements. No signature, just a stamp that read WGC, followed by the imprint of a local bank, one with branches all over the country.

The checks told me nothing new.

I threw the folder into the top drawer, disappointed. I’d let myself hope that the answer was here in the checks. Now I would have to double check my inventory input and I couldn’t do that without the laptop.

A bulging envelope with Kym’s distinctive curlicue writing was on my desk. I pulled it open and swore. She’d had the last word after all. In the bag was a copy of every receipt from today’s business at the booth, along with the cash, checks, and credit card receipts. From the size of the pile, they’d been very busy all day. That was great news for Quilter Paradiso, but rotten news for me. Under the old system, I had to enter all these transactions in the ledger by hand before I could balance the money and get the bank deposit ready.

Worse yet, I’d have to sort out which sales went through the computer and which had not. I’d have to match every check and each credit card transaction with its receipt. A tedious, time-consuming, mind-numbing chore. Brought to me by Kym.

I was not going home anytime soon. Laughter again erupted from the front of the store. I felt very sorry for myself as I closed the door and returned to my desk.

I was deep in the process when the phone rang.

“Dewey,” my brother said, recriminations already evident in his voice. His timing was impeccable. “Kym’s a mess.”

The top of my desk was a sea of receipts. “Kevin, don’t start with me. Your wife …”

“She’s really upset about the computer, sis.”

I put him on speaker phone and lit into him. “She’s upset? I’m furious. She refused to learn the program, she pulled the plug on the laptop and left me with a huge mess to clean up. She’s doing everything she can to make me look bad.”

“Come on, Dewey. Cut her some slack. You knew she wasn’t happy about the store going online.”

I sighed and rubbed my fingers against my temples. Kevin owed his loyalty to his wife, but I wasn’t used to this alliance. As kids, it had always been me and Kevin against our two older brothers. His relationship with Kym had snuck up on me. Busy with the pressures of working at a startup, I didn’t know how hard he was falling for her until it was too late and they were engaged.

When I didn’t answer, Kevin changed to a more sensitive subject. “I just spoke to Dad. He’s stuck at Donner Pass. He won’t be home until Sunday.”

“That figures.” I couldn’t hide my disappointment. My father was unable to deal with the first Quilt Extravaganza since his wife’s death. His job had always been to help my mother with setup and teardown. This year, he’d had a sudden urge to go fishing. Late spring snows in the Sierras were conspiring to keep him away. I needed him here.

Kevin sighed. “He’s avoiding me because I’m trying to get a line of credit at the bank. I can’t take these big jobs without one, but he refuses to listen.”

Kevin and Dad were always at odds over money. Dad thought Kevin took too much liberty with his credit cards, and Kevin thought Dad’s stand on remaining debt-free was ludicrous. It was an old argument, one that would probably never be resolved until Dad retired and Kevin took over Pellicano Construction completely. I made a neutral noise, unwilling to get bogged down in his fights.

Kevin realized he’d hit a conversational dead end. “Kym told me about Claire Armstrong. Weird, huh?” Kevin said.

“You have no idea,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted. I wanted to tell him about finding Claire. I wondered if he knew about Mom selling the store to her. I couldn’t believe that if Kevin or Dad had known, they wouldn’t have told me.

“I’ve got to go,” he said suddenly. “Kym wants me to watch
Survivor
with her.”

I wanted to keep him talking to me. “Kevin, you know QP hasn’t been doing very well, don’t you?”

“The valley’s economy is not that great. Things’ll turn around.”

“I don’t think it will.” I took a deep breath. “Kevin, Mom —”

“Dewey, not now. Kym’s waiting for me.”

Not now. It had been like this ever since Mom died. No one in my family would talk about her. Mentioning her favorite dish at a family dinner put everyone off their feed. If I started an anecdote about her poor sense of direction, Sean go out his portable GPS unit and started talking about geocaching. Pulling out the family albums, I could clear the room in six seconds.

“She was going to sell the shop to Claire,” I said, but the phone was dead. “I found her body,” I finished although I knew no one was there.

The door to my office opened as I was hanging up. Vangie was framed in the doorway.

“Whoa, Dewey. I was shocked to hear your voice. We were so busy out front, I didn’t know you were here,” she said.

Evangeline Estrada, Vangie, had started working at the store several years earlier as a high school kid, part of a work/study program. After graduation, she’d left QP and drifted, getting in with a bad crowd, doing drugs and getting caught. She’d spent time in custody, but when she got out, Mom had hired her back, convinced her innate goodness would win over her addictive personality. So far, so good. She knew as little as I did about quilting, but she knew computers.

She was relentlessly honest—it was what kept her to her straight path. I relied on her to tell me the truth.

I leaned back in my chair. “Everyone gone?”

“Yup, we had a great day.”

Her chocolate eyes flashed with pride as she held up the bulging deposit bag she had readied from the cash register up front. She had thick brown eyebrows that matched her long curls.

I held up the mesh bag Kym had left. “Looks like the booth did okay, too. Trouble is I don’t have the laptop, so I’m trying to balance the old-fashioned way.”

“Where’s the laptop?”

“In police custody.”

“Get out! Did you have Kym arrested for something?”

I laughed but sobered up quickly when I realized she didn’t know I’d found Claire’s body and spent the afternoon with the police. Vangie harbored a deep-seated resentment of authority figures.

“You heard about Claire, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. First Kym called and then of course the customers were yammering on about it all afternoon. Her death was the number one topic of conversation.”

“Well, I found her, and I left my backpack in her hotel room. The cops took it as evidence. The laptop was in the backpack.”

Vangie’s gaze unfocused. “What were you doing in Claire’s room?”

My turn to tell the hard truth. “I went to talk to her about buying the shop. Vangie, my mother was planning on selling QP to her.”

She looked away. “I knew that.”

“You knew?” It was my turn to be shocked.

“Yes, but I thought it was a moot point once your mother died. Until today, I figured Claire had given up.”

“Vangie, we’ve got to keep this between us. No one else knows.”

Vangie glanced up at me quickly, her expression giving her away. I grabbed her hand. “Come on, Vangie. Spill.”

“Kym knows. She saw you talking to Claire this morning,” she said quickly, trying to soften her words with speed. “She called here and caught me off guard. She asked what Claire would want with you and I told her about the shop sale.”

I said, “Well, if she was trying to change my mind about selling, trashing the laptop was not the way to do it.”

Vangie turned pale. “Did you decide to sell?”

I nodded.

She put on a brave face. “No worries. I’ll find a new job.”

I curled back into my chair, a knot forming in my stomach. In my haste to get out from under Kym and her machinations, I hadn’t considered what would happen to my employees. Selling the store would mean putting people out of work. I’d have to make sure that didn’t happen. I felt the weight of my responsibilities pressing on my shoulders, and I shrugged to release the tension.

“You found the copies of the checks?” Vangie asked.

I nodded. “Yes, thanks. I looked at them but I still don’t know why we’re paying WGC that money each month.”