Knot Ready for Murder

Book 9: Quilting Mystery

by Mary Marks

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

The ninth installment in the hit Quilting Mystery series by Mary Marks finds sleuth Martha searching for her fiancé’s ex-wife.

One loose thread threatens to unravel Martha’s wedding plans: the groom-to-be married a pregnant teen to save her from scandal thirty years ago—and the marriage was never annulled. Now Crusher’s wife Hadas is coming to LA, along with his sister Fanya. But soon after she arrives, their houseguest goes missing, with her room ransacked and a chloroform-soaked cloth left behind. Could her apparent abduction be connected to her brother’s unsolved death from a hit-and-run six months ago? Martha and her quilting cohorts must find the pattern to solve the twin mysteries and determine if Crusher is still married—or now a widower . . .
 
Praise for Mary Marks and Knot of this World
 
“Framed by details of quilting, tarot-card reading, and Rose’s Jewish faith, this satisfying cozy, replete with full-bodied characters, will be relished by quilters.”
—Booklist
 

 

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Release date: July 27, 2021

Publisher: Kensington Cozies

Print pages: 274

Sample

Using the side of my dinner fork, I concentrated on cutting neat, little squares in the potato kugel on my plate. Should I say something now or wait until everyone leaves?

My stomach fluttered with anxiety as I thought about my options. As much as everyone at the table will probably approve, shouldn’t Crusher be the first person to know? He’s been so patient . . .

I’d managed to reduce the kugel, a potato and onion casserole, to nine bite-sized pieces when my daughter, Quincy’s, voice dragged my attention back to the Sabbath table. “Earth to Mom. Come in, please.” All conversation stopped as seven pairs of curious eyes focused on me.

Embarrassment warmed my cheeks. “Sorry.”

Quincy continued to probe. “Is everything okay? You’ve hardly touched your food. Are you ill?” Since becoming a mother herself, my daughter had become keenly aware of exposing her infant daughter to germs.

I gave my daughter a tight little smile. “No, I’m fine.” Actually, I was more than fine. My name was Martha Rose, and at my age—still in my fifties but marching toward sixty—I had made an important decision regarding my future.

My sister, Giselle, lowered her fork and pinned me with laser eyes. “Then if you’re not having a stroke, give it up, Sissy.” Giselle was long on smarts but short on tact.

I learned I had a half sister only a year ago. Together we discovered the fate of our father, who’d gone missing more than thirty years before.

“What’s going on with you?” she asked.

Everyone sat at attention, eagerly anticipating my response. I sighed with resignation. Obviously I wasn’t going to be able to discuss this first with my fiancé, Yossi Levy, aka Crusher. I reached for his hand.

He encouraged me with a slight nod of the head. “Go on, babe. Whatever it is, I’ve got your back.”

I cleared my throat, found my voice, and gazed into his impossibly blue eyes, into the face of the man who waited patiently for me to overcome my fear of failure. “No more waiting, Yossi. I—I’m ready to get married.”

The table erupted into a chorus of “mazel tovs.”

He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly. “It’s about time.”

The rest of the evening he avoided looking at me. Something was wrong. Crusher had been proposing marriage almost every day for years. Now I was finally willing to become Mrs. Yossi Levy, he looked miserable.

Everyone began to chatter about having a wedding at Giselle’s estate in Beverly Hills. My sister and daughter vied for which of them deserved to be my maid of honor. Giselle plopped her back against the chair. “Fine. We’ll both be maids of honor.”

“And Uncle Isaac can sing the seven blessings,” Quincy said.

Crusher remained unusually quiet. I should’ve listened to my gut and said something to him first. For the rest of the evening, I sat on shpilkes, waiting for everyone to go home.

Quincy and Noah were the first to leave, bundling their sleeping baby girl in the sweet pink-and-white quilt I’d sewn for her. Uncle Isaac and his helper Hilda prepared to leave with Giselle and her fiancé, Harold. My eighty something uncle patted my shoulder with a hand wobbly from Parkinson’s disease and whispered, “You’ve given me such nachas tonight, faigela.”

I loved it when he called me little bird in Yiddish.

“I’m glad I lived long enough to see you settle down with a real mensch.”

Apparently, my anxiety didn’t pass unnoticed. My sister waited for everyone else to walk out the door, grabbed my arm, and took me aside. “Something’s not right. You’ve been twitchy all evening.”

I lowered my voice. “Not now, G. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I closed the door behind my sister and paused for a breath. Water splashed in the kitchen sink, an indication Crusher was washing the dinner dishes, according to our well-established division of labor. If one cooked, the other cleaned.

With my heartbeat pulsing in my throat, I headed toward the kitchen, compelled by both curiosity and dread.

“I should’ve warned you first, Yossi. I’m sorry for blurting it out like that.”

Without looking up, he scraped table scraps off the plates and stacked them on the counter. The white Sabbath china was a family heirloom we carefully washed by hand to preserve the delicate cobalt blue and gold bands on the rim. “I couldn’t be happier, babe. But I wish you’d spoken to me first. There’s something I need to tell you.”

I moved over to the sink, stood next to him, and gently touched his arm. “What is it, Yossi? You know you can tell me anything. I won’t judge you.”

He turned off the stream of water and turned to face me. I’d never seen him that tortured. “We have to hold off on the wedding for a while.”

“Why? Have you changed your mind about wanting to be married?” A seed of anger took root in my brain, and I took one step backward in order to peer at his face. “Because if you have . . .”

“I haven’t changed my mind. It’s just that I’ve got to do a couple of things before we can make it legal.”

“Like what?”

“Like get divorced.”

I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly. “You’re married?” Sour heartburn shot upward from my insides. “You told me when we first got together you’d never been married. You lied to me?”

Crusher dried his hands on a towel and gently held my shoulders. “Not really. It’s a complicated story. I’ve never been married—in my mind, at least. But there was a wedding years ago. The marriage was never, uh, consummated. I was helping out a friend.”

“You mean like helping someone get a green card?”

He sighed. “I wish it was that easy.”

“Well what, then?”

He grasped my hand and led me to the cream-colored sofa in the living room, where we sat facing each other. He squirmed on the seat and coughed nervously. “Back when I was a student in the yeshiva, there was a girl, the sixteen-year-old sister of a friend of mine. Her name was Hadas. She got pregnant. Unfortunately, the father of her baby was already married to someone else.”

“How did you get involved?”

“One day when I was visiting my friend Ze’ev, we found Hadas sitting at their kitchen table, crying. She blurted out the whole story. She said everyone would be better off if she and the baby were dead. That’s when my friend concocted the idea of me marrying his sister and pretending I was the father. I mean, it was a lie, but under the circumstances, it was a matter of pikuach nefesh.” He referred to the principal in Judaism in which the laws could be ignored if—in doing so—a life could be saved. If he could prevent the girl from committing suicide, two lives would be saved.

I slowly understood the enormous mitzvah my future husband performed for the sake of the girl and her child. “Okay. I get it. You married her out of compassion. What happened next?”

“I left the yeshiva and took a construction job to support the two of us. That’s where I got the name Crusher. From working the rock crushing machine.”

“So, she’s the reason you never completed your studies?”

“No way. She was my excuse for dropping out. The truth is, I wanted to leave anyway. You know me. I’m not the kind of guy who can sit all day. We found a tiny, one-bedroom walk-up on the fourth floor in Brooklyn. She slept in the bedroom and I slept on a sofa bed.”

“Oh, come on. You want me to believe you never slept with her?”

“That’s exactly what I want you to believe because it’s true.”

“I think we need a drink.” I went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of wine from the half-empty bottle left over from dinner. I returned to the living room and handed him a glass. “I’m not criticizing you, Yossi. After all, this was a long time ago. Right?”

He took a sip from his glass and set it on the coffee table. “Right. A very long time ago. Like almost thirty years.”

“And the baby? What happened to it?”

“Hadas miscarried at five months. The baby didn’t survive.”

“Wow. You went through all that for nothing.”

“It wasn’t ‘for nothing.’ I got to leave the demands of the seminary life and she and her family got to maintain a good reputation. After she lost the baby, Hadas moved back in with her parents. Her brother Ze’ev, my friend, was grateful for the way I helped the family avoid a scandal. He gave me his solemn promise he’d help us with an annulment. The family got a lawyer to draw up the papers, which I signed and returned to them. At that point, my involvement ended. And that’s it. You have the whole story.”

I swallowed the last of my wine and stared into the bottom of the empty glass. “Not quite the whole story. How did you find out you’re still married? What happened to the annulment?”

He groaned and closed his eyes. “I don’t know why Ze’ev didn’t keep his promise, but those papers never made it to court. They were never filed. My sister, Fanya, knows the family. She was the one who broke the news to me about the annulment. She’s flying in from New York tomorrow afternoon. I tried to discourage her, but she can be stubborn.”

Crusher came from an Orthodox family, who wouldn’t dream of travel on the Sabbath.

“Something must be really important if she’s willing to fly on a Saturday.”

He raked his fingertips through his beard and looked at me sideways. “She’s not coming alone.”

My ears started to buzz. I thought I knew the answer before I asked, “Who’s she bringing?”

“Hadas.”

I spent a restless night fretting over having to guess the reason for Fanya’s visit. My tossing and turning didn’t faze Crusher as he snored softly. Why is she bringing Hadas? Does Hadas want Crusher back after all these years? Why didn’t she get an annulment? How much of a threat will she be?

Had Crusher been totally honest with me? Even though my rational mind told me this present situation wasn’t his fault, he should have followed through with the annulment years ago. Bitter resentment crept up my gut and landed in the back of my throat. I finally fell into an exhausted sleep around three in the morning.

When I opened my eyes again, the clock read eight. The curtains were drawn shut, but they couldn’t totally defeat the gentle morning light from creating a warm glow in the bedroom. Every muscle and joint ached with a painful flare-up. I threw aside the down comforter, rolled out of bed, and hobbled to the bathroom to take my fibromyalgia meds. The face staring back at me from the mirror looked pinched and drawn with pain. Puffy bags sat under my eyes, testifying to a night with little sleep.

I raked a wide-toothed comb through my gray curls. Oh great. Crusher’s “wife” Hadas will still be in her forties. She probably has a perfect figure, perfect hair, and a creamy complexion. How can I compete with her? She might be younger than me, but I’m not going to let her waltz in and grab my future husband. If she wants to fight, I’ll give her a run for her money.

Saturday was supposed to be a day of rest. But I knew I wouldn’t relax until the house was clean and sparkling. I wanted my home—Crusher’s home—to be above reproach. God forbid Hadas should find a reason to criticize!

By the time I shuffled into the kitchen for my first cup of coffee, I was primed for combat mode. It must’ve shown on my face because Crusher came over to me and gave me a hug. “Morning. Are you okay?”

I stuck out a defiant chin. Does he think he can drop a bombshell about his marriage and expect me to welcome his wife in our home? “Hardly slept at all.” I brushed past him and walked over to the coffee maker sitting on the apricot-colored marble kitchen counter. I poured myself a large mug of Italian roast and plopped down at the kitchen table and glared at him.

Crusher reached into the oven and pulled out a plate of pancakes and scrambled eggs. My favorite breakfast. “I kept these warm for you.” He placed the plate in front of me in an act of contrition.

His strategy worked. The more I ate, the more benevolent I became.

Between mouthfuls of fluffy scrambled eggs, I managed a question. “Tell me about her. Hadas. Tell me what to expect.”

“I haven’t had contact with her since she moved back in with her parents.”

“Oh, come on. Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to the annulment? Didn’t you ever try to find her on Google or Facebook?”

He shrugged. “She’s not on Facebook. But my sister, Fanya, is friends with the family.”

I’d talked to Fanya on the phone a few times but never met her in person. She’d never once mentioned Crusher’s wife. “Since your sister was friends with the family, didn’t you ever ask her to find out about the annulment?”

“Once I asked her to find out why I never received the final papers. Hadas assured Fanya everything had been taken care of.”

“Well, how was Hadas back then?”

“Wild and rebellious, considering the community we lived in.” He referred to the Jewish enclave in Brooklyn.

“Was she pretty?” I watched his discomfort as he navigated through a minefield of possible wrong answers.

He eyed me carefully and, from his expression, I guessed he was contemplating the wisdom of making comparisons. “She was . . . uh, attractive, yes. But,” he added hastily, “definitely not my type.”

I laid out another minefield for him to walk through. “What is your type?”

He closed his eyes and scrubbed his face with his hand. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

I smiled, taking pleasure in his discomfort. “You have only yourself to blame. So? What is your type?”

“You’re my type. Smart, funny, and beautiful.” A slow grin curled his mouth. “And sexy. Very sexy.”

I threw back my head and laughed. “Right answer. I guess we can still be friends. What did you do to the pancakes? They’re extra-good this morning.”

“Cinnamon.”

“I’ve only talked to Fanya over the phone. Tell me what to expect.”

He sipped his coffee. “You can’t tell we’re siblings because she got all the good looks in the family. She’s smart and she’s tall. Us Levys tend to be tall.” He wasn’t kidding. At six feet six inches, he was the tallest person I’d ever known.

“Is she religious?”

He shook his head. “She is fiercely superstitious, but not religious. Contrary to our parents’ expectations, she chose not to marry. She loves her independence too much. Fanya’s a lot like you, in that respect.”

I finished my breakfast and put the dishes in the dishwasher. Even though work was strictly forbidden on the Sabbath, we spent the bulk of the morning doing laundry, scouring the bathrooms, dusting, and vacuuming. I wanted Hadas to know she was up against a balabusta, a skilled Jewish homemaker. After an inventory of the inside of our refrigerator, I sent Crusher to the market. Buying and selling was also forbidden on the Sabbath, but this was an emergency. Fanya and Hadas didn’t have to know what day the food was purchased.

By two in the afternoon, we’d finished our labors and I was about to take a shower when my sister, Giselle, called. “You know, Sissy, I’ve been waiting for hours. You were supposed to call me today, remember?”

Oh crap. “The day isn’t over yet, G.” I’d been too focused on making my house sparkle to remember my promise to call my sister.

“Well, I can’t handle the suspense any longer. You were antsy and distracted all evening. Yossi, too. Harold agrees. Something’s troubling both of you.”

I told her about Crusher’s marriage to Hadas.

“Shut the front door! He’s married?”

“In name only. Yossi signed the papers and trusted his friend to do the legal stuff, but apparently that never happened. His sister, Fanya, is flying to LA as we speak, and she’s bringing Hadas.”

“Why now?”

“Excellent question, G. I won’t find out until they arrive. I think Yossi means for them to stay with us.”

“Are you going to let that happen? Are you going to let his wife, for God’s sake, stay in your home?”

“Actually, G, it’ll be easier for me to keep an eye on things if they do.”

Little did I know how much I would grow to regret that decision.

Crusher left Encino at three to meet the five o’clock arrival of Fanya’s flight from New York. In LA, one always hoped for the best traffic conditions, but the smart driver added extra time in case there was a major delay on the freeway. I calculated he wouldn’t return with our guests for another four hours.

While he was gone, I ignored another Sabbath prohibition. According to the strict rules of Orthodoxy, kindling a fire (such as cooking or operating a vehicle) was one of the thirty-nine types of work forbidden on the day of rest. Food must be prepared before the Sabbath began at sundown on Friday. I chose to overlook many restrictions imposed by such a strict practice of Judaism. My personal observance fell somewhere between the traditional or moderate branch and the Reform or liberal branch. I had plenty of time to cook dinner and get dressed before Crusher returned with our two houseguests.

Around seven, the sound of the automatic garage door opening indicated Crusher had arrived. Perfect timing. I’d finished dressing in an Eileen Fisher long-sleeved gray tunic and matching wide-legged trousers. I walked with measured steps toward the front door and waited until I heard their voices. I took a deep, calming yoga breath and plastered a pleasant smile on my face.

Fanya kissed the mezuzah on the door before entering. She towered over me by at least ten inches. Enormous golden hoop earrings about the size of a child’s bracelet dangled from her ears. Tortoiseshell combs kept her long chestnut curls from falling over her face. She wore a fisherman’s sweater, stonewashed blue jeans, and what appeared to be Doc Martens boots. She looked much younger than her forty-five years.

“Martha!” Fanya crushed me in a bear hug, smashing my face against her boobs. Then she grabbed me by the shoulders, took a step backward, and appraised me from head to toe. She flashed a smile wide enough to see a gap between her two front teeth, just like Crusher’s. “I’m so glad to finally meet you in person. We always seemed to miss each other those few times you came to New York.” The grin vanished as she leaned toward me and whispered, “Be careful.”

Oh no. Was Hadas going to be a problem? I nodded once to acknowledge her warning. “Wonderful to see you, too.”

Fanya stepped aside, allowing me to greet the other woman. I sipped a quick breath when I saw Hadas. She reminded me of the exquisitely gorgeous Penélope Cruz; dark, luxurious hair and golden skin. Her blue, almost-violet eyes were made more intense by her purple sweater. Hadas definitely took care of herself in the intervening years. She raised her chin to literally look down her nose with a smile as real as a cobra’s. “You must be Martha.”

I offered my hand to shake, which she ignored. The smile I returned was equally insincere as her own. “Not only must I be Martha, I insist on it.”

En garde.

Crusher stood in the doorway with two rolling suitcases and looked like he was about to throw up. The battle line had been drawn, and he knew it. “Martha’s prepared a nice dinner for us. I’ll take your bags into our guest room.”

Hadas stepped over to Crusher and purred, “I’ll go with you, Yossi. A lady always likes to freshen up after a long journey.” Hadas placed a proprietary arm through his and tittered as he awkwardly rolled the luggage. “Are you nervous? Don’t be. After all, you’re still my husband.”

I watched in disbelief as they disappeared together down the hallway.

Fanya waited until they were out of earshot. “She means to get him back, Martha. I tried my best to discourage her, but gornisht helfen.” Nothing helps.

“That’s not going to happen!” I growled through my teeth.

Fanya wagged her head. “I’ve known Hadas since we were schoolgirls together. When she gets something in her head, she’s relentless. Believe me, she’s always shown such chutzpah.”

“Maybe so, but I’m just as relentless. Anyway, I’m puzzled. Why is she coming after him now? And why didn’t she go through with the annulment?”

“You’ll have to ask her about the annulment. As to the other, I believe she’s always had a crush on Yossi. Even before their so-called marriage.”

“Still? Almost thirty years have passed since then.”

Fanya shrugged. “Some people never get over their first love. She couldn’t stop talking about him. Believe me, she was hocking a chinek for five hours straight on the plane.” Fanya used the Yiddish expression for someone who . . .