The Quilt Whisperer Investigates

Book 0: Quilt Whisperer Mystery

by Peggy Ehrhart

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

Synopsis

Working at the Arts and Crafts Museum in small town Massachusetts, a quilting and antique quilts expert pieces together a patchwork of clues against the vibrant backdrop of a New England fall in this crafty new cozy series from Peggy Ehrhart, acclaimed author of the Knit and Nibble Mysteries.

As Associate Director and Curator of Special Collections at the Yates Museum, Caroline is excited to pick up a prized antique quilt from Nancy Critchley, one of Banburyport’s wealthiest residents, for an upcoming exhibit. . . . Until she discovers Nancy dead on the floor of her beautiful Federalist home. The muslin bag that held the quilt is empty. On the table is a napkin smeared with what appears to be tomato juice—in a design that may have been Nancy’s final message.

Garret Seldon, the town’s new police detective, pinpoints museum intern Amber Foster as the top suspect. Amber’s blog is sharply critical of the Critchley family, among other prominent citizens from Banburyport’s past, for exploiting less fortunate residents in order to gain their riches. But could long-ago sins really have spurred someone to stab Nancy with a pair of sewing scissors?

All of Banburyport is abuzz with theories, including the regulars at Farrow Square Coffee. A humiliated caterer, a developer angered by Nancy’s work with the Historical Preservation Committee, disgruntled family members—there are plenty of possible motives and suspects. And then there’s the missing quilt, a priceless creation that’s almost 200 years old.

Caroline and her good friend and landlady, Libby, are convinced of Amber’s innocence. And somewhere among these tangled threads, Caroline knows there’s a pattern to be uncovered, one that ties together the colorful secrets of Banburyport’s past and present . . .

Includes quilting tips and pattern!

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Nancy Critchley lived in a noble house on a street of noble houses. The house, in the austere but elegant Federal style, dated to the seventeen hundreds, when the triangle trade made sea captains like Ichabod Critchley wealthy almost beyond imagining. As is often the case, wealth bought respect, whether merited or not, and a statue of Ichabod Critchley still presided over Banburyport’s harbor.

Caroline Platte’s errand today related to the Critchley family’s history. She had been invited for brunch, and to consult with Nancy Critchley on an upcoming museum exhibit that was to feature an antique quilt with a unique pedigree. The pattern was Flying Geese, with its long parallel strings of symmetrical triangles all pointing the same direction and looking for all the world like a migrating flock. The quilt was known to have been created by a long-ago Critchley ancestor. That ancestor’s portrait was owned by the museum where Caroline served as Associate Director and Curator of Special Collections. Nancy planned to loan the quilt to the museum for the duration of the exhibit.

Caroline had walked from her house, a distance of several blocks. The walk had been pleasant, owing to Banburyport’s brick sidewalks and the well-tended yards and gardens enroute, where trees were already glowing red and gold with autumn foliage. Now she made her way up to the front door, which was lacquered black and contrasted strikingly with the buff clapboard that sheathed the house’s exterior. A brass knocker in the shape of a whale fit the hand comfortably and produced a resounding clang.

The house was large, very large, and Nancy was upstairs completing her toilette perhaps, or in the kitchen tending to meal preparations, so Caroline waited, enjoying the late-October morning with its hint of cooler days to come. After a minute or two had passed, she knocked again, but there was still no response.

Today was the day, she was sure, and this was the address— scarcely needed, since everyone in Banburyport knew which house was the Critchley house. She retreated from the low porch, just a few steps up from the front walk really, stole across the lawn, and then stepped gingerly through a bed of salvia to where a many-paned window allowed a glimpse inside. A long table was flanked by chairs, many chairs—too many chairs to host one guest for a simple brunch, and anyway the table was bare but for a pair of graceful silver candelabra.

Caroline tiptoed out of the salvia and continued around the house, checking side windows that offered views of pleasant rooms but no sign of Nancy. A door in the center of the house’s back matched the door in the center of its front. But this door had a window—or it had once had a window. With a start, Caroline realized most of the window was gone, leaving just a few jagged remnants protruding from the window frame.

The door shifted slightly, calling attention to the fact that it wasn’t latched. Caroline lurched backward, feeling in her handbag for her phone. Then the door shifted again, and the gap between door and doorjamb widened. Her fingers closed on her phone, but she remained staring at the gap between door and doorjamb. Staring back at her were the eyes of a cat.

The eyes were pale green and the cat was a gray tabby, as became evident when it slipped gracefully through the gap and planted itself at her feet, looking up at her in a way that suggested an urge to communicate. Curiosity replaced fear, and as if responding to that shift in Caroline’s mental state, the cat turned back toward the door. After a moment, it swiveled to glance upward, meeting Caroline’s eyes.

“Do you want me to follow you?” she heard herself say, as a voice in her head inquired, Is that wise?

Indeed, the broken window seemed evidence that something untoward had occurred, but would the cat be willingly reentering a house where a malefactor lay in wait? She pushed the door open farther and took a hesitant step into a long hallway, shadowy but for daylight reaching it through the open doors of windowed rooms along its length. The cat trotted purposefully ahead, its tabby coat rippling as its muscles flexed. Midway up the hallway it paused at a doorway and then veered off to the left to enter a room.

Caroline paused, too, and then followed.

The room was charmingly decorated, an intimate room suited for breakfast, in contrast to the grand dining room Caroline had glimpsed through the front window. Wallpaper featuring huge garlands of blowsy roses covered the walls, one of which was interrupted by a window draped with swags of pink satin. Four wooden chairs with graceful spindle backs and striped satin cushions flanked a round table which held, Caroline noted, evidence that a guest had indeed been expected.

Two places had been set with china, silver, and crystal. One waited, undisturbed, its white linen napkin still tucked neatly beside its sterling fork, and its crystal tumbler awaiting juice. The other, however …

Caroline’s heart gave a lurch that reminded her of its location, and she laid a comforting hand on her chest. The crystal tumbler lay on its side, the remains of a few ice cubes and a wedge of lemon dotting the puddle of dark juice on the pale linen tablecloth. A Bloody Mary, offered a voice in Caroline’s head. Nancy had been known to like a tipple. The linen napkin was rumpled and stained with juice, and the chair at that place setting had been twisted to the side, as if the person sitting in it had risen suddenly.

The room itself and then the table and its contents had claimed Caroline’s attention, but she’d been standing on the room’s threshold barely a minute before her gaze traveled downward. Her hostess was present, it seemed, but in no state to receive a guest.

Nancy Critchley was lying on the floor, sprawled as if she had fallen forward onto the Aubusson carpet whose pastel tones complemented the room’s décor. She was—or had been— an attractive woman in her sixties, whose well-tended hair, body, and complexion suited her role as current mistress of the Critchley house. The cat was nowhere to be seen, apparently satisfied that it had carried out its errand of summoning help—though clearly Nancy Critchley was at this point beyond help.

The scene seemed unreal, and Caroline herself felt removed from it—as if she was studying a museum exhibit, perhaps. But it wasn’t unreal, and she once more slipped her hand into her handbag to feel for her phone. It took only a moment to touch 911 on the phone’s screen, and only another moment to blurt out, “I’m at Nancy Critchley’s house on Straight Street and I think there was a break-in and I think she’s dead.”

She should go back outside to wait for the police, she suspected, rather than loiter at what was very likely a crime scene. She scanned the room again, though, unable as a museum curator to ignore the evidences of wealth and good taste the Critchleys had accumulated through the generations. The goldrimmed china, with its pattern of stylized flowers rendered in deep blues and reds, might have arrived in Banburyport harbor on a ship launched from England, while the sterling knives, forks, and spoons, their handles swirled with complicated flourishes, might have been produced right in Banburyport.

She took a tentative step closer to the table as her attention drifted from a fork, untouched at the place setting that would have been Nancy’s, to the rumpled white linen napkin, definitely not untouched. A smear of tomato juice besmirched its once-immaculate surface. Stepping even closer, Caroline noticed that the smear was not just a random smear. Instead, it seemed purposeful, as if Nancy’s fingers had tried to sketch out a shape before she collapsed onto the carpet.

The moan of a dying siren reached Caroline’s ears, and she backed into the hallway. Across from the room that had been the intended venue for the brunch, a door opened into the house’s elegant living room—though its elegance was somewhat tempered by the presence of a large muslin bag, like a giant off-white pillowcase, draped over the carved mahogany frame of the graceful sofa and at odds with its lustrous upholstery.

It was the storage bag for the quilt she had come to collect! But it was empty, quite clearly empty. Nancy had fetched the quilt from its storage place and staged it near the brunch venue, but whoever had broken the window in the back door, and dispatched Nancy, had made off with the quilt. Instead of the antique quilt, its colors soothed by the passage of centuries, there was only a limp muslin bag.

But now was not the time to ponder a connection between Nancy’s death and the disappearance of the quilt. A quick glance toward one of the many-paned windows looking out at the street told her that a police car had alighted at the curb and two uniformed officers were making their way up the front walk. She should greet them at the front door, she supposed, and save them the trouble of circling the house in search of the person who had summoned them.

The clang of the brass door knocker resounded down the hallway and Caroline advanced toward the door. The first face she saw upon opening the door was that of Officer Clem Rizzoli, familiar to her because, like her, he was a patron of the coffee shop in Farrow Square. Hovering behind him was an officer she didn’t recognize.

“You reported an incident to nine-one-one?” Officer Rizzoli inquired, bobbing his head this way and that as he peered down the hallway that stretched behind her. “Is this your home?”

Feeling surprisingly calm, though she could sense her pulse ticking in her neck, she said, “This is the Critchley house.” How can anyone who lives in Banburyport not know about the Critchleys? asked a voice in her head, as she went on. “I’m Caroline Platte, from the Yates. Nancy Critchley invited me for brunch, but now she’s …”

Caroline stepped aside, swung the door open all the way, and waved toward the room that was to have been the brunch venue. As the officers trooped past her, she added, “The window in the back door is broken, and that door was ajar when I arrived.”

She remained where she was. Snatches of dialogue drifted down the hallway, detached words like “suspicious” and “evidence” and “Seldon.” After a few minutes, the officer who wasn’t Clem Rizzoli emerged. He strode down the hallway, waiting until he stood a few feet away to say as solemnly as he could manage, “This is likely a crime scene, ma’am. You need to leave the premises.”

He was a very young officer, with a slender build and a pleasant, eager expression.

“Front door or back?” she inquired.

In response, he eased past her toward the front door and reached for the doorknob. He twisted, the latch clicked, and the door opened to the sunny brightness of the autumn day. In a moment she was standing on the front walk as the door closed once again.

Soon a second sleek black and white car bearing the Banburyport police department logo, with its nautical theme, nosed up behind the one that had delivered the two officers. At the wheel was a man who, from her first encounter with him, had put Caroline in mind of a teddy bear. He extracted himself from the car and, with the breeze tousling his unruly brown hair and his brown canvas barn coat flapping open to reveal a comfortable paunch, made his way along the walk to where Caroline waited.

“It’s you?” he said.

Caroline nodded. “I was supposed to have brunch with her.”

He looked around furtively for a moment, prompting Caroline to whisper, “They’re inside.”

His face relaxed and he whispered back, “Don’t call me Garret, okay? It’s Detective Seldon.”

Caroline nodded again.

The front door opened. The officer who wasn’t Clem Rizzoli stepped out and took a few steps down the walk. The detective met him, and Caroline heard him inquire whether the officer, whose name proved to be Jenkins, had “checked the perimeter.”

“Do it now,” was the response.

With a sharp salute, Officer Jenkins set out in the direction of the salvia beds.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Detective Seldon said, and he set off toward the front door. Caroline was left alone then, except for a few curious neighbors standing on the tidy lawns of their own noble houses and trying not to gawk too openly at the police cars.

Some time passed, time that slowed the thump of Caroline’s heart and the rhythm of her breathing. Detective Seldon (or Garret, as she knew him) would be studying the scene that she herself had encountered when she followed the gray tabby indoors and down the hallway. She pictured that scene now. Nancy Critchley lay sprawled on the carpet, with no obvious sign of injury. On the table set for brunch, a crystal tumbler had been tipped over, spilling the remains of a Bloody Mary. A rumpled linen napkin nearby bore a puzzling shape that Nancy had apparently sketched out with tomato juice.

Had the Bloody Mary perhaps been poisoned, and aware that she was dying, had Nancy tried to leave a clue to help explain her demise?

Voices reached Caroline from the closest neighboring yard. A few new arrivals had joined the well-dressed couple who were apparently the homeowners, and the homeowners were confessing bewilderment at the police presence.

The front door of the Critchley house opened then, and Detective Seldon stepped onto the porch, provoking the male homeowner to explain to the newcomers that he must be part of the police because he had arrived in a police car.

“All right then,” Detective Seldon said when he was close enough to Caroline to speak quietly, “tell me again why you’re here. Lunch? Brunch?”

“Brunch,” Caroline clarified.

“Why?”

“You don’t think a person would want to have brunch with me … just to have brunch with me?” Caroline suppressed a laugh as a flush crept across the detective’s chubby cheeks.

“Of course,” he said after closing his eyes and then opening them again, “but she is—was—Nancy Critchley.”

“Museum business, actually.” Caroline tried to sound kind, kind and cooperative, in an effort to undo the effect of her earlier teasing. “Nancy is—was—loaning the Yates a quilt as part of the ‘Banburyport at 400’ exhibit. I was supposed to pick it up this morning, but now it’s gone.”

“How do you know it’s gone?” He leaned forward with a skeptical head tilt and furrowed brow. It was a look so at odds with his normal expression that she suspected he practiced it in front of a mirror.

“The storage bag is here, or in there actually”—she nodded toward the house—“but the bag is empty. It’s the big muslin bag draped over the back of that Sheraton-style sofa visible through the door that opens to the living room. Obviously one purpose of the break-in was to steal the quilt.”

“Break-in?” Instead of leaning forward, he took a step backward. “And you know there was a break-in because …” The skeptical head tilt and furrowed brow returned.

“Because the window in the back door is—”

“Sir!”

As Officer Jenkins rounded the corner of the house, Detective Seldon whispered, “Don’t act like you know me.” Then, speaking louder and turning to Officer Jenkins, he added, “Yes, Jenkins?”

“The window in the back door is broken and the door is ajar. It looks like there’s been a break-in.”

“So! Yes, of course.” Detective Seldon cleared his throat. “That explains how the perpetrator got in.”

“It’s how I got in too,” Caroline murmured.

But Detective Seldon continued to address the officer, saying, “Add the back door to the crime scene, and secure the surroundings, and tell Rizzoli to get the county MSU people here.”

“MSU?” Officer Jenkins halted. Puzzlement erased his eager expression.

“The crime people. Do it!”

“CSU, sir? MSU is the university.” Caroline noted that, somehow, Officer Jenkins was managing not to laugh.

“Whatever. Do it.” Then the detective turned his attention to Caroline once again. “Was there anything else?”

“You were interviewing me.”

“I meant, was there anything else you wanted to tell me, besides the fact that the bag the quilt should have been in was empty?” He fumbled in the pockets of the barn coat, trying several before retrieving a small notepad, which he flipped open, and a pen. Then he focused his gaze on her, waiting with pen in hand.

“There is something else,” Caroline said. “Two things really, but do you want to write something down about the empty quilt bag first?”

Frowning at the small notepad, he made a quick notation and looked up expectantly.

“Nancy said she had some other things for the exhibit, sewing things that went with the quilt, but she didn’t say what specifically. I expect they were taken too.”

He made another notation.

“Also, I noticed something about the napkin by Nancy’s place setting,” Caroline went on. “It was rumpled, like she had handled it. And there were strange marks on it that looked like she’d been trying to leave a message, scrawling something out with a finger dipped in tomato juice.”

“I observed the napkin, yes.” He nodded, and a stray lock of hair flopped over his forehead. The pen remained motionless.

“The marks could be important,” Caroline said. “They could be a clue.”

“I doubt it. Napkins get dirty, especially when people spill their tomato juice.” He snapped the notepad closed. His gaze drifted toward the street as he slipped the notepad into a pocket whose plumpness suggested it was already quite full.

The curious neighbors who had remained in their yards were now rewarded with the arrival of the county’s crime scene unit, in the form of an impressive white van. It glided along the curb and came to rest. The doors in the back opened and two people, already garbed in hooded white jumpsuits, hopped out.

“You can go,” Detective Seldon said to Caroline, “and when you get home, please tell my mother I might be later than I expected.”

Caroline would have liked to check the backyard before departing—though she imagined it was now off-limits—because of the cat, which must have been Nancy’s. Was it lurking outside, frightened by the commotion? Or was it inside, upstairs perhaps? She’d make sure Detective Seldon knew there was a Critchley cat somewhere about the premises and likely in need of care.

Nodles Street, where Caroline lived, was only one block long. It had been an anonymous alley until the Banburyport town fathers decided to honor a well-loved mayor and pillar of the community by naming a street after him. But Alexander Seldon, a long-ago forbear of Garret Seldon, had been too modest to countenance a street named Seldon Street, and so the letters of his surname had been reversed to spell “Nodles.” To reach Nodles Street, Caroline had merely to proceed several blocks north on Straight Street, jog right at Avocat, and continue for another very short block.

Caroline’s home had once been the carriage house of a big house similar to Nancy Critchley’s, though not quite as noble. The former carriage house was small and tidy, and it suited her, a small and tidy woman in her forties. She had been delighted to find it available for rent when she moved to Banburyport after accepting her museum job, and even more delighted to make the acquaintance of her landlady, Libby Seldon, who owned the big house and the carriage house. Libby had become a good friend.

Two years had passed since her arrival. Living alone, she had no one to please but herself, and she had decorated the little house exactly to her taste. The living room’s main furnishings were a rose-colored loveseat and a comfy armchair upholstered in flowered chintz. A few wooden pieces, which could have been antiques but weren’t, provided surfaces to write on and to eat on, and bookshelves held books and a collection of eighteenth-century children’s toys.

It wasn’t even noon yet, but time slows down when the mind is presented with unexpected events. Caroline felt she had already lived a whole day, and then some. Perhaps that was why she was suddenly … famished.

Of course! She had been invited for brunch, but brunch hadn’t been forthcoming. Her larder contained eggs, she was sure, and there was always bread for toast. But first, she sat at her desk, a graceful maple piece with spindly legs, and took a pad of paper and a pen from the drawer. Closing her eyes, she summoned the view from the doorway of Nancy Critchley’s breakfast room. She felt a jolt as she recalled the body on the carpet, seeing it in her mind as vividly as she’d seen it then.

She willed her inner gaze to shift upward, to focus on the table and the spilled contents of the crystal tumbler, and especially the rumpled napkin with the enigmatic marks. She touched the point of the pen to paper and sketched out a swift J shape. After studying it for half a minute, tipping her head this way and that, and then rotating the pad of paper, she added another J shape, this one tilted slightly so that the tops of the two long stems almost touched and the lower curves formed a pair of scallops. She tore the top sheet from the pad and slipped the sketch, the pad, and the pen back into the drawer.

Caroline’s kitchen, too, was small and tidy. The space wasn’t conducive to flights of decorating fancy, though shelves mounted on the wall displayed a small collection of Colonialera pottery with its distinctive rust-red hue. She was just transferring a carton of eggs from the refrigerator to the counter, an action that required only two steps, when a familiar voice greeted her from the doorway.

“Didn’t she feed you?” inquired Libby.

“The brunch didn’t happen,” Caroline said.

“That’s not like Nancy.” Libby seemed more puzzled than surprised. “She’s usually so fussy about proper etiquette. Canceling an invitation at the last minute—my goodness!”

The shock was tongue in cheek, and Libby winked. She was a sturdy woman in her sixties who had dressed with the same bohemian flair and worn her hair the same since she was an art-school student in Paris long ago. Now her hair was more gray than black, but still a long and loose expression of her free spirit.

“Nanc. . .