A Bias for Murder

Book 3: Queen Bees Quilt Shop

by Sally Goldenbaum

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Mystery; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

Oliver Harrington II was one of the most beloved members of Crestwood’s community. Despite being the picture of health at age 52, he died from a sudden heart attack, leaving behind the family mansion on a sprawling piece of property. His twin sister, Adele, returned to the town she despises to claim her brother’s home, intent on turning it into a B&B. And she’s hired Po Paltrow and the Crestwood Quilters to craft quilts for the guest rooms. But Adele is not the only one interested in the future of the Harrington estate. A developer wants to put multiple houses on the land. The townsfolk just want their neighborhood to retain its small-town charm and not become a tourist trap. But when an autopsy reveals that Oliver was actually poisoned, suspicion falls on his sister. Po doesn’t believe Adele is guilty, leaving her determined to discover who else harbored deadly designs on the Harrington home...

Release date: August 6, 2019

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 224

Sample

Prelude

Oliver Harrington walked down the back staircase from his second-floor bedroom, one hand gripping the banister tightly.

The noises had come from the kitchen right below his bedroom. A shuffling sound. A strange cat, maybe. Some smug feline finding Neptune’s cat door in the basement and making its way up for food.

He wasn’t afraid of the noise, not really. Things made him anxious sometimes, but not afraid. In fact, Ollie couldn’t remember ever being afraid in all his fifty-two years. He didn’t get angry much, either. Hardly ever. But he was angry this time, angrier than he had ever been in his whole life. Because it wasn’t fair. None of it. That’s probably why he was hearing things. It wasn’t a cat after all. It was the uncomfortable rumblings of anger rattling around in his head.

Narrow windows along the old staircase looked out over the lawns and gardens of the Harrington Estate. But Oliver’s eyes didn’t see the lawns and gardens; Ollie looked up, as he always did, up toward the magnificent galaxy spread like a gauzy quilt above the town, above his house. So magnificent it took his breath away.

A deep, starry night. Ollie could see the great Andromeda Galaxy with his naked eye. He paused on the staircase, his breath catching in his throat. Exquisite. Miraculous. Nearly three million light-years away, and he could see it from this window of his home in small Crestwood, Kansas. It was surely a miracle. How could people not see that? How could they not revel in its mystery? But some did. Ollie did.

Finally, forcing himself to breathe, as if the dazzling beauty of the universe above him was almost more than he could handle, Ollie took another step down. For as long as he could remember, this was where he found peace—looking up into the universe, relishing the knowledge of how it all worked. Bowing to its majesty and mystery. The amazement never dimmed, just like the North Star.

“Glorious,” he said, the single word traveling out of his mouth and piercing the still, predawn air, echoing down the hardwood stairs before him.

When Oliver was a boy, the back staircase had been the way servants got to the kitchen quickly and silently from their third-floor rooms. He couldn’t remember when that had changed. Probably when he and his twin sister were college age and Adele went off to her East Coast school, but he couldn’t be sure.

Oliver had lived in the Harrington mansion nearly his whole life. He’d left briefly for a junior college in the east, a school his mother chose carefully, one that would offer extra attention to her special son, and give him a chance to explore the things he loved—astronomy, writing.

It hadn’t worked. They made him take other subjects that didn’t capture his mind and spirit, and Oliver failed. And years later, he finally got the degree that would have pleased his mother, a bachelor’s in science from Canterbury College. Or university, as they wanted to call it now, though it seemed a little uppity to Ollie. And then the professors had let him stay on, taking any classes he wanted to take. And even most Crestwood students treated him like a person, not someone they considered odd because he didn’t talk about sports and dancing and girlfriends.

A bang beneath him halted Oliver’s movement and he stood still on the bottom step. It wasn’t soft like his cat.

But it was alive.

Probably some neighborhood kid playing a trick on me. Maybe he should start locking his doors. His friend Halley had been surprised when she discovered he didn’t lock up. But she didn’t grow up in a small town—she didn’t understand. Halley worried about too many things, he thought, his will and deeds and things that didn’t matter much to Oliver. Other people worried about those things, too, but Ollie just smiled and agreed, and that seemed to make everyone feel better.

His brown eyes fought the fog of darkness in front of him. Finally, his bare feet felt the flat surface of the kitchen floor and he slid one hand across the wall, his fingers finding the light switch. He flicked it on.

Yellow light fell on the wide-planked flooring and bounced off the stainless steel counter and refrigerator. The kitchen was big enough to feed an army, Halley had told him the other day, but Oliver kept every surface clean and sparkling. He loved the stainless tops because you could see the perfect reflection of the entire room, even his own face. Sometimes he saw Halley’s in it, too, standing there beside him. Oliver loved the orderliness of the kitchen, the pots hanging in order of size, the cups in the glass-fronted cabinets lined up in perfect symmetry. He loved this house. His home. His memories.

It was way too big for him, he knew that, and all sorts of people were telling him that these days. Move to a condo, Ollie, Tom Adler kept telling him. I’ll find you the best in the city and take this monster off your hands.

But 210 Kingfish Drive wasn’t a monster at all. It was home. Always would be.

Ollie looked around the room and out the window to the wooded backyard, back toward the pond that Joe, his gardener, tended to. No branches moved in the Indian summer night. No sound. Only the silence of the stars. Silly. No one was here. Just in his dreams, that’s all.

Oliver pressed the boiling water button on his sink and filled a china cup, then scooped up a cup of loose herbed tea from the canister on the counter. He and Halley and Joe had laughed about that the other day—how Ollie made midnight trips to the kitchen for a cup of tea. They didn’t believe him that herbed tea solved all ills. But it was true. He’d sleep like a baby. A cup of ginger tea and the fog in his head would clear. It would scatter his silly thoughts of a strange kitty cat coming into his house to visit Neptune or steal a bit of food.

He leaned against the counter, his bare feet planted on the smooth wooden floor, and slowly sipped his tea. The room brought him comfort and he could almost smell the chicken noodle soup the cook used to make for him when he was sick, the hot biscuits she would bring all the way up to his room. The back door led out to a small enclosed porch where years ago the milkman left bottles of fresh milk and where the Harrington twins would line up their boots after building snowmen in the backyard.

The door to the porch was slightly ajar. Oliver frowned. Had he left it open when he let his cat back in the house before going to bed? He walked over and closed it with the flat of his hand, then jumped at the noise. And then the meow. Through a window in the door, he spotted a small cat on the porch, staring up at him with accusing eyes. “Neptune,” he said. The word came out on a sigh of relief. Ollie smiled and let the black cat in. Mystery solved. That’s what he’d heard, his sweet Neptune.

Oliver sipped his tea, staring out into the starry night, knowing he needed sleep and strength for what the new day would bring. He hated confrontations, but he couldn’t let it go this time. It was wrong. Plain and simple. Against the law.

He drained the last liquid from the cup and rested back against the counter again, the cold edge pressing through his thin bathrobe. Time to go back upstairs, read that little collection of Loren Eiseley’s essays that Halley had given him. Fall asleep with visions of galaxies filling his head. And he’d deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.

Oliver left his mother’s Limoges teacup in the sink and headed for the stairs. The tea had done its magic and a dreamy fog settled over him. He pulled himself up the first step, then another. Sleep. It was on its way.

Oliver reached the first landing where the steps curved back upon themselves and a small window lighted his path. He paused for a minute, taking in a breath of air, then frowned as the brightness of the stars beyond the window dimmed.

An eclipse? No, it wasn’t time. He squinted at the window, moving now, in and out, wide and narrow, like a fun house mirror. The tree branches beyond, leaves falling. Humming, dancing in slow motion.

Ollie released his hold of the walnut railing. A dance. He was dancing, moving slowly through the air. A ghost in the night.

Neptune stood at the foot of the stairs, her green eyes watching as Oliver’s long slender body turned slightly, then bent at the waist, doubled over, and slowly somersaulted down to the wide-planked kitchen floor.

Neptune meowed, then walked over to Oliver’s face and gently licked his moist sharp chin with her gravely tongue.

Chapter 1

News of Ollie Harrington’s death caused a ripple of sadness through the Canterbury University community and the neighborhood where his family had lived for generations.

But a larger ripple—nearly a tidal wave, Po Paltrow thought—occurred almost immediately after when Ollie’s twin sister, Adele, elegant and self-assured, swept down upon the small town of Crestwood a day Ollie Harrington died.

Shades of Isadora Duncan, Po thought that day when she spotted Adele Harrington speeding down Elderberry Road in her long elegant Cadillac convertible, a yellow scarf tied around her neck and flying in the autumn breeze. A veritable whirlwind. But the thought that Adele’s arrival would cause a chaos of rather momentous proportions—at least for Crestwood Kansas—was beyond Po’s imagination. Not then. Not when people were still able to conjure up sympathy for a grieving woman who had lost her twin brother.

Adele’s years away had made her an unfamiliar figure to most residents, but in the space of two days she had quickly and efficiently taken over the Harrington mansion, disturbed quiet neighbors with strident demands to trim trees and keep children away from her property, and alienated nearly everyone else in town, including the family’s lawyers and especially the police.

Even the group gathering in Selma Parker’s quilt shop on Elderberry Road was affected by the woman who had come to bury her brother.

“Like who would have imagined a quiet man like Oliver Harrington would have a sister like that!” said Phoebe Mellon, the youngest member of the group, as she looked around the cluttered table, searching for a pair of scissors.

Eleanor Canterbury handed them to Phoebe. “It’s a shame. Adele may have come back to bury her brother, but she’s doing damage to the Harrington name with her demands and rude manners.” A rare note of displeasure crept into the lively voice of the Quilters’ only octogenarian. Eleanor picked up a square of flowered red fabric and examined it through her bifocals to see if she had left any stray threads hanging. Doing all her piecing by hand—mostly because it was portable that way and she could take it with her to Paris or New Guinea or wherever she might be headed—was tedious but practical, and as Eleanor herself said in her perfectly gracious voice, “I am damn good at it.” The crazy quilt table runner she was finishing bore testimony to her words.

“But you have to admit that she’s adding some excitement, El,” Phoebe said. “Even moms in my twins’ playgroup are gabbing about her. Word has it she eats three-year-olds.”

Po laughed at Phoebe’s irreverent comment, the kind they’d come to expect from her. She looked to the end of the table at Selma Parker. “Selma, what do you think is up with Adele? I remember her, certainly, but mostly from events when she’d come back to town to visit family. Did you know her?”

“I knew her mother,” Selma said. She wet one finger, then touched the iron to be sure it was hot. The Saturday quilt group had met in the back of Selma’s fabric store for as long as anyone could remember, beginning back when Selma’s mother ran the shop. Members changed as life ran its course, daughters and granddaughters and sometimes friends of original members taking their place. And Selma loved it all—especially the present group, an unlikely mixture of women with an age span of nearly sixty years, anchored on either end by Phoebe and Eleanor. Though the group had begun as quilting companions, their lives had become as intricately entwined as the strips of fabric they deftly fashioned into works of art.

Satisfied that the iron was hot and the sewing machine was ready to go, Selma looked back at Po. “Adele didn’t stick around Crestwood long, as you probably remember. She came back for a short while after graduating from Smith College. But she couldn’t settle down. I remembered her own mother urging her to go back east. Encouraging her to leave. She told her that Crestwood wasn’t big enough for her. There seemed to be some tension in the family, but it was never talked about, of course. Walter Harrington was a pompous, arrogant, man—”

“Aha,” Maggie Helmers interrupted, “it’s in the genes, then.”

“Well, Ollie sure didn’t inherit them. He was a very lovely man. Simple, but at the same time, oh-so-smart,” Po said. “He would sometimes walk by our house when Scott and I were out in the yard, and he’d walk up the drive, telling Scott about something he had learned in science class, talking quickly and continuously about whatever it was that had captivated him. I think he figured that as president of Canterbury College, Scott would know everything.”

“That’s really sweet,” Kate Simpson said. “I kind of remember that, although I was nothing but a squirt when Ollie hung around.”

“I’m sure he seemed a little different to you kids, Po said. “I don’t think he fit in with his peers as much as with adults.”

“Well, it’s no surprise he stopped at your house, Po,” Maggie said. “People like you and Scott would make anyone feel comfortable. People, cats, dogs, hermit crabs.”

Po laughed. “Well, I think Ollie made a place for himself here in Crestwood.”

“But not his sister. I remember Adele not liking Crestwood much, especially once she got a taste of the East Coast.” Eleanor said.

“Apparently that hasn’t changed,” Kate said. She pushed her chair back from the table and took a drink of coffee, trying hard not to spill it on the mounds of fat quarters piled on the table. “The neighborhood kids are already calling her the wicked witch of the north. But I feel kind of sorry for her. This can’t be easy for her, coming back to bury her twin brother. Maybe this is how she handles grief, keeping people at arms’ length on purpose. She’s probably not so bad.” Kate had come back to Crestwood to bury her own mother several years before, and the memory was still fresh, though cushioned now as sweet memories filled in around her loss.

“Bad? Kate, she’s downright nasty,” Maggie said. “She brought her dog into my clinic yesterday. The waiting room was packed because Daisy Bruin’s beagle was hit by a car. He’s fine now. But anyway, Adele elbowed her way to the counter and demanded that Emerson be seen immediately. She was so rude. And then—” Maggie’s hands gestured while she talked, and she waved several pieces of freezer paper onto the floor. “And then when Mandy—my new technician—tried to calm her down and explain why she’d have to wait, Adele told her she had bad breath and should see a dentist.”

Po shook her head. No matter how badly Adele was acting, her grief was still fresh. She picked up a finished block of her quilt hanging and held it up to the light to check the hand stitching on the abstract design. She was trying something new—piecing together bright oranges and yellows and minty green strips in wavy swooshes. She would put it in the upper hallway, she thought, where it would brighten up the interior space. “I agree with Kate. Imagine all that she’s dealing with. Figuring out the service, the burial, and what to do with that enormous house. It’s difficult—”

“So you haven’t heard?” Leah asked, her brows lifting in surprise.

“What?” Maggie, Phoebe, and Kate asked in unison.

“People at the university went over as soon as Adele arrived. Professor Fellers suggested the college help with the memorial service for Oliver. Jed Fellers was Ollie’s mentor, you know, and he spent a lot of time with him. Ollie was such a sweet guy—a little different like you said, Po—but he loved the library and learning and the college. He even sat in on some of my classes once in a while. Anyway, Adele said no to Jed’s offer.”

“Why?” Po asked. “That was such a generous offer. And appropriate. The college was Ollie’s world. That and the galaxy.”

Leah took a breath, then filled in the rest of the story. “Her brother’s body was already gone when she arrived.”

“Gone where?” Phoebe asked.

“Probably to the funeral home,” Maggie said. “If Adele came in a day later, maybe whoever takes care of their estate matters had the body removed.”

“No,” Leah said. “It was gone because the police had it moved to the morgue and are arranging for an autopsy.”

“What?” Eleanor asked. “Why? He had a heart attack, right?”

“But Ollie was in great health. And sometimes in cases like that, an autopsy is done—even though it’s entirely possible he did die of a heart attack. Apparently, whoever made the decision was new to the police department and thought Ollie had no family, so no one got Adele’s permission to move the body. She was furious about the whole thing, the way it was handled. Everything. Perhaps that’s why she’s been less than civil to people.”

“I’m not sure I blame her,” Po said. “Having your twin die unexpectedly is an awful thing. But they can still help her plan a memorial. It will just be slightly delayed.”

Leah shook her head. “According to university officials, she doesn’t want anything. No memorial. No funeral. Ollie will be cremated as soon as they allow her to arrange it.”

The group fell silent, massaging the news by concentrating on the beautiful pieces of material in front of them. The cotton squares of color, vibrant enough to light up a dreary day.

“Do you suppose Adele will leave soon, then?” Phoebe asked. “What will happen to the home on Kingfish Drive? My in-laws say it’s worth zillions.”

“It’s a magnificent home,” Po said. “I remember going to parties there when Adele and Oliver’s parents were alive. And I stopped by now and then when I saw Ollie around, just to say hello, to take . . .