Four-Patch of Trouble (20 page)

Stefan cleared the front counter, and we spread the quilt on top.

"I don't have a good spot for taking whole-quilt pictures," he said. "You'll have to take the pictures a quarter at a time and then piece them together."

That kind of piecing, which didn't involve a sewing machine, I could do. I dug my camera out of the messenger bag while Stefan arranged the quilt on the counter.

The print that I was suspicious of was in that first section, and I was relieved to see that it was a little frayed and worn along the seams. The fabric had aged naturally, like the one in the museum quilt and unlike the more modern fabric in the reproduction quilt sold to Martha McDowell. Stefan's quilt was as legitimate as I'd originally believed.

I took several shots of the first quadrant and then waited for Stefan to arrange the quilt for the next section. "I didn't mean to suggest you would have stolen from Tremain, but it had to have been someone familiar enough with quilts to know the difference between a real antique and reproductions."

"You can't be suggesting Dee and Emma," he said, sounding almost as outraged as Lindsay had been at the idea of someone suspecting her grandmother of a crime. "I can understand the police thinking Dee and Emma might have had a reason to kill Tremain, but theft? They're both familiar enough with quilts of all ages to recognize a real antique when they see one, but they're even less likely than I am to steal one. They're in charge of hundreds of quilts each year, some of them heirloom quality. If they had ever wanted to steal a quilt, they could have done it a hundred times over by now. But in the entire history of their show, not one single quilt has ever gone missing. I bet they could steal the top prize-winning quilt, do it in broad daylight, in front of a hundred witnesses, and no one would believe their own eyes. Dee and Emma just don't care about the money, and they don't even care about owning any quilts. They just want to make and share them."

"I'll be sure to have Emma's attorney call you as a witness." I took a few more pictures. "Who else would know enough to steal the only valuable quilt in the shop?"

"You would." Stefan moved the quilt again and smoothed it out, avoiding looking me in the eye. "No offense, but you did ask. You would know better than anyone else. You're a certified expert, after all, and I saw you go in there yesterday with the prosecutor. I assume you got a closer look at the merchandise while you were there."

"You're right. I did." I couldn't blame him for being suspicious, given the circumstances. "I just want to help Dee and Emma, and that means considering all the possibilities. Just for the record, I didn't steal the quilt or kill Tremain."

"I didn't really think you did. Dee said you're one of us now, part of the quilting community." Stefan looked up from rearranging the quilt, no longer afraid to meet my gaze. "What about Alyse? As Tremain's business partner, she must have known which quilt was the most valuable."

She definitely knew. I'd told her, just hours before the theft.

I took the last pictures while I mulled over Alyse's possible role in the theft.

"The timing is suspicious, but blaming Alyse for the theft doesn't make sense. She still claims to believe Tremain was completely aboveboard in all his dealings. Why take the one legitimate antique and leave all the incriminating fakes behind?"

"Maybe she finally accepted what a scumbag her partner was and decided to take the most valuable thing in the shop as compensation for the damage he's done to her reputation."

"In that case, why wouldn't she fake a larger-scale robbery to take all of the quilts?"

"Maybe there was something special about that one quilt," Stefan said. "Are you absolutely sure it was legitimate?"

"I'm afraid so. I convinced Wolfe to let me do an unofficial appraisal because I was convinced it would turn out to be fake. He was there to gloat when I told him it was the real thing."

"If Wolfe knew it was legit, then he could have stolen it."

"He doesn't have a motive." Even when Wolfe had seen the price tag, he hadn't seemed the least bit interested in anything other than how it affected his murder trial. "The quilt's financial value wouldn't be worth the risk to him and his political future if he was caught. Plus, Wolfe had no reason to kill Tremain, and I wouldn't be surprised if the murder and the theft are related somehow."

"What's the connection?"

"I don't know. We need to find the stolen quilt, and then it'll probably be obvious."

"I doubt anyone's really looking for the quilt," Stefan said, folding his own quilt to transport it back to the dark room. "I've been reasonably lucky over the years, but I've had a few break-ins. The police come, and they take a report, but they never find the stolen merchandise. Five break-ins, a dozen distinctive pieces of art taken, and I haven't gotten even one of them back. Wherever Tremain's stolen quilt is, it's never going to be returned to Alyse. Assuming she doesn't already have it stashed away somewhere herself."

Alyse was looking more and more like a serious suspect in both the theft and the murder. She had the knowledge, means, and opportunity to steal the one valuable quilt in the shop. It would have been useful to know what their partnership agreement said about what happened to the business assets in the event of one person's death. It was entirely possible that they accounted for their respective merchandise—Tremain's textiles and Alyse's silver—separately, so that the quilts would now belong to Tremain's estate instead of to Alyse. In that case, as far as motive went, the five-figure price tag was a big one. Then, if Alyse was angry enough to steal the quilt in revenge for Tremain's abuse of her reputation, could she have been angry enough a day earlier to kill him?

"I wonder if even Tremain knew how valuable his four-patch quilt was. It wasn't quite as impressive as yours, but he could have copied that one instead of yours."

"He probably did," Stefan said. "Tremain wouldn't miss any chance to copy a valuable quilt."

"We'll probably never know for sure. I doubt anyone's going to speak up now to admit they bought a fake from him, since it would make them a suspect in his murder."

"What about the quilts in his inventory?" Stefan said. "Did he have any more copies of the four-patch somewhere? He could have been doing a bait and switch. Show the customer the quilt on the wall and then deliver the fake copy."

That made more sense to me than the sentimental attachment Alyse claimed he had to the quilt. "I checked all the quilts on display, and there was nothing remotely comparable to the one on the wall."

"If Alyse is as innocent as she claims, maybe Tremain had the fakes stashed somewhere so she wouldn't stumble across them."

The only quilt anyone had stumbled over recently was the one on Tremain's dead body. I dug through my messenger bag for the picture Wolfe had given me of the bloody quilt. "There is one quilt from the shop that I didn't get a close enough look at to appraise." I dropped the picture on the counter between us.

After a brief glance, Stefan said, "That's nothing like my quilt. Same era, but wrong number of blocks, more restricted color palette."

He was right. It was nothing like Stefan's quilt, but it was exactly like another quilt. I scrolled through the pictures on my camera until I found the shot of the stolen four-patch. Comparing it to the one on Tremain's body, I berated myself for not noticing the similarities before. Of course, the lighting where the quilt had hung on the will had been dim, and in my shock I'd blocked out everything in the crime scene except the corpse and the blood. Now though, I was fairly certain the quilt on Tremain's body was a reproduction of the quilt on his wall.

I handed Stefan my camera. "Compare the quilt from Tremain's body to the one that was stolen."

Stefan took the camera and picked up the picture to hold next to it. After a moment, he said, "They're identical in all the ways that matter. One of them is a reproduction."

Two reproductions connected to Tremain—the one on his body and the one he'd sold to Martha McDowell—might not have been enough to convict him of criminal fraud, but now even Wolfe would have to admit there were more likely suspects than Dee and Emma.

"Can you put the quilt away on your own? I need go to talk to the prosecutor. With these pictures, maybe he'll reconsider the charges against Emma until he's had a chance to check out some of Tremain's victims."

"Go, go," Stefan said, shooing me out of the shop. "The sooner you can get Emma released, the better."

*   *   *

Wolfe met me at the door to his office, blocking the entrance. "If you're here to ask me to drop the charges against Emma, it's not going to happen. We've got more than enough evidence for an indictment."

From what I'd picked up from chatting with criminal defense lawyers, a competent prosecutor could get an indictment with the skimpiest of evidence. Wolfe was probably referring to the argument between Emma and Tremain. Presented well, that probably would be enough at the preliminary stage of a criminal case, and there was no point in trying to convince him otherwise. I might have a better chance of swaying him if I could appeal to his ego and the desire to avoid doing something that would look bad for his political career. "Would you rather I gave my new information to her defense attorney without giving you the chance to do the right thing?"

Wolfe backed up. "Come on in. But make it fast. I've got a press conference to prepare for." He settled behind his desk. "It's tomorrow morning. I wanted to do it today for the evening news, but my boss asked me to save it for tomorrow. We might get two days' coverage out of it that way. First story tonight with the arrest, then tomorrow for the official statement."

The more I got to know Wolfe, the less I liked him. And I hadn't liked him much to start with. He was on the verge of doing irreparable damage to an innocent person, and all he could think about was the good publicity he could get out of it. "You might want to hold off even longer and get all the facts."

"I've got all the facts I need." He patted the file on top of the cluttered desk.

I stifled a sigh. It was one thing to stick to a theory once it was fully developed, but at the early stages of a case, it was important to keep an open mind. And I was going to open his, one way or another.

I dropped my messenger bag onto one of the chairs and retrieved the picture of the quilt that had been found on Tremain's body. "For starters, this quilt at the crime scene is a copy of the one that was stolen from Monograms last night."

"Wait? A quilt was stolen?"

I thought he was joking, but his puzzled look confirmed he hadn't heard about the theft of Tremain's one and only valuable quilt. "There was a break-in last night. Someone stole the quilt hanging on the back wall. The one I told you was the only legitimate antique in the place."

Wolfe leaned back. "Tough break for Tremain's heirs, but I don't see what it's got to do with the murder."

"I'm getting to that." I pulled up my camera's clearest picture of the stolen quilt and leaned over the desk to hand it to Wolfe. "Compare that to the picture of the quilt from the murder scene. If you want the nutshell version, the quilt on Tremain's body is a copy of the one that was stolen from Monograms."

After the briefest of glances, Wolfe returned my camera. "If you say so. Maybe Tremain did it for his own use. You don't know he was going to sell it. The fake was found in his private space, after all, not out in the shop itself."

"One quilt could be a coincidence, but there's a second fake." I scrolled to a picture of Martha McDowell's quilt and turned the screen toward Wolfe. "He most definitely sold this reproduction, claiming it was an antique. The buyer is willing to testify to that fact. It's a copy of another antique quilt Tremain had access to. I can show you a picture of the original."

"No, thanks." He waved away the camera. "They all look the same to me. Hypothetically speaking, let's say I believe you, since you're the expert and all. I don't see how this helps your friend Emma. It just proves she was right to accuse him of selling fakes, so she didn't kill him for the wrong reason. Doesn't mean she's innocent."

"It does open the door to reasonable doubt pretty wide, though. I'm not saying you couldn't charge Emma eventually, but it's premature right now. You need to talk to more of Tremain's clients to see who else might have been scammed. Every one of the names on the list Alyse gave you could have a motive to kill Tremain. Stronger than Emma's, since they'd be avenging a real, financial wrong, not simply acting to uphold a general sense of honor. All I'm saying is you should hold off on making any potentially embarrassing decisions until you have all the evidence."

"Faint heart never won fair lady." He grinned with anticipation. "Or a murder conviction."

"Neither does rushing to judgment."

"I'm not an idiot. I've got all the evidence I need for now, and more is coming in every few hours." He leaned forward to grab a folder from the corner of his desk and waved it in the air. "Just got this forensics report establishing that the quilt on Tremain's body was actually part of the murder weapon, not simply tossed there at the end. I was thinking it was a crime of passion, but this suggests premeditation. Your friend tossed the quilt over Tremain's head and then she bashed his head against the wall."

"But if that was the cause of death, wouldn't the killer have been covered with blood? I was under the impression that a quilt wouldn't have been enough to prevent the killer from getting blood spatter on him."

"That's only true if the killer wrapped
herself
in the quilt instead of wrapping the victim," Wolfe said smugly. "The forensics guys think the quilt could have absorbed all of the blood if it was wrapped around him tightly enough."

"What about the blood on the floor? No one at Monograms had any on their shoes. Wouldn't the killer have had some?"

"Most of the time, that would be true," Wolfe said. "But sometimes a person gets lucky. I figure Emma was standing between Tremain and the doorway. She bashed his head in, he fell forward into her arms, and she pushed him away from her, dropping him in the middle of the room. All of the blood was on the far side of the body, away from where she was standing."