Gone But Knot Forgotten

“I want to do one last favor for an old friend.”

Lucy narrowed her eyes. “Uh oh. Please tell me you're not going to get involved in another one of
those
again.”

Lucy's voice sounded more than a tad disapproving as she alluded to my recent penchant for discovering dead bodies and getting sucked into murder investigations. And both times the killers came after me.

“This is way different, Lucy. First of all, the attorney never said anything about murder here. Second of all, being the executor of someone's estate only involves signing papers and selling stuff. There's nothing to worry about. What could be more straightforward?”

My redheaded friend shivered a little. “You know, Martha, I'm getting a strong feeling about this.” Lucy swore she possessed ESP and could tell when something bad was going to happen.

In the past, I'd dismissed her feelings as some kind of displaced anxiety. But if I were honest, I'd have to admit that in the last several months her warnings turned out to be valid. Still, the lawyer gave no indication poor Harriet's death was anything more than tragic and premature.

“For heaven's sake, Lucy. Don't you think I've learned my lesson? Don't you think I'd run straight to the police at the first sign of something suspicious?”

Without hesitation, Lucy and Birdie responded in unison, “No!”

FORGET ME KNOT

 

KNOT IN MY BACKYARD

 

GONE BUT KNOT FORGOTTEN

 

 

MARY MARKS

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, I'd like to thank those people so essential to writing this book: my mentor, Jerrilyn Farmer, and my critique partners (in alphabetical order) Lori Dillman, Lindsey Fenimore, Cyndra Gernet, Carlene O'Niel, and Rochelle Staab.

I'm also indebted to a variety of awesome experts. Thanks to my legal guru, Linda Greenberg Loper, Deputy DA (retired) LA County; Lisa Holzer, computer maven; Grant David Brown, a most excellent gamer; Dr. Shelby Sanett, preservation specialist; Sofia Leiva, Salvadorian food expert; Britt Heymann, consultant on Swedish culture; and Shelley Piser, yoga instructor. An extra thanks to Rochelle for the tarot tutorial.

I always save the best for last. Heartfelt thanks go to my agent, Dawn Dowdle, at Blue Ridge, and my editor, John Scognamiglio, and his incredibly able staff at Kensington.

C
HAPTER
1

So far, the morning mail only yielded credit card invitations, an interesting flyer for yoga classes, and now that I belonged to AARP—another postcard advertising the Neptune Society. I picked up a white number ten envelope, glanced at the unfamiliar return address, and almost tossed it in the junk pile, but something stopped me.

First, my full legal name, Martha Rivka Rose, appeared above my address. I never used
Rivka.
Second, the envelope looked official, not part of a mass mailing. The law offices of Abernathy, Porter & Salinger of Los Angeles, California, paid full price for the stamp.

I reached for the white plastic letter opener, a prize I received from the UCLA Department of Internal Medicine after having my first colonoscopy. The envelope tore neatly along the top fold, and I pulled out a one-page letter.

Harriet died? I hadn't heard from her in over twenty years. We'd been best friends in high school. She moved to Rhode Island with a scholarship to Brown, while I lived at home and attended UCLA. Years later, she returned to Los Angeles with her husband, Nathan Oliver, a fellow Brown graduate. I had married Aaron Rose, a local boy finishing his psychiatric residency at LA County Hospital. Harriet and I reconnected at our tenth high school reunion in the late 1980s.

Since we all lived in Brentwood, a tony part of the west side, we met a few times for dinner. Harriet and her East Coast husband collected wine and art, while Aaron and I focused on raising our three-year-old daughter and paying the mortgage on our much smaller home. Eventually even the dinners stopped. By the time I divorced Aaron and relocated to a not-so-tony part of Encino in the San Fernando Valley, Harriet and I had already drifted apart.

Now, sadly, she was dead at the age of fifty-five. What took her so young? What about her husband? Children? The more I thought about the letter, the more questions I had.

I telephoned the number Deacon Abernathy gave me.

“Deke here.”

“Mr. Abernathy? My name is Martha Rose. I just received your letter about Harriet Oliver.”

“Oh, right. Thanks for calling, Ms. Rose. We have some details to go over, including Mrs. Oliver's funeral instructions. How soon can you come to my office?”

“Wait a minute. Please slow down. When did Harriet die? How did she die?”

“I'm sorry. Got ahead of myself. Has it been awhile since you spoke to Mrs. Oliver?”

“Decades, actually.”

“That explains our problem locating you. We only had your old Brentwood address to go by. Under the circumstances, I guess I'm not surprised.”

“What do you mean, circumstances? What's going on?”

“There's no delicate way to say this, Ms. Rose. We discovered Mrs. Oliver's body in her home about three weeks ago. The coroner estimated she'd been dead for at least ten months.”

Thank goodness I was already sitting. My ears started ringing and a black circle closed out my peripheral vision. I envisioned horrible pictures of desiccated corpses and skulls with gaping jaws. “Ten months? Didn't she have family? What about her husband?”

“It's too complicated to explain over the phone. The thing is, Mrs. Oliver hasn't been buried yet. We needed to wait until we located the executor to make certain, ah, decisions. So, you can appreciate, Ms. Rose, the sooner you get here, the sooner we can, ah, lay her to rest.”

Poor Harriet. How was it possible nobody missed her? She'd been such a vibrant and pretty teenager with long black hair she ironed straight every morning before school. During our sleepovers we whispered about our plans for college, our hopes for the future and which girls slept with their boyfriends. When she left for Brown, we hugged and cried and promised to write letters every day. But time and distance slowed our friendship. With the exception of our brief reunion in Brentwood, we moved into completely separate lives.

I shuddered at the thought of her body lying unattended for ten months. It really bothered me that nobody missed her. Didn't the neighbors notice any bad odors? I agreed to meet the attorney at the Westwood office of Abernathy, Porter & Salinger later in the afternoon.

After ending my conversation with Deacon Abernathy, I gave my shoulder-length gray curls a once-over with a wide-toothed comb. Then I stuffed my Jacob's Ladder quilt, sewing kit, and an emergency package of M&Ms into a large red tote bag and headed for my best friend Lucy Mondello's house. Today was Tuesday, and I never missed our weekly quilting group. I drove in a daze, trying to make sense of the shocking news about Harriet's death. What a horrendous way to go—alone and evidently forgotten.

I maneuvered my way across Ventura Boulevard and wound around a couple of side streets before pulling up in front of my friend's house. The boulevard served as a natural dividing line between classes in Encino, one of the many small communities in the San Fernando Valley. Small homes, condos, and apartment buildings sat on the valley floor north of the boulevard. That was where I lived, in a tract of medium-priced midcentury houses. Residences south of the boulevard—especially those constructed in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains—tended to be large, custom-designed, and
très
expensive. Lucy lived somewhere in between: south of the boulevard but not in the hills, gracious home but not a McMansion.

She smiled and greeted me as I pushed open the front door. “Hey, girlfriend. You're a little late. Everything okay?”

Lucy always dressed with a theme. Today she wore canary yellow twill slacks, a yellow-and-white-striped long-sleeved T-shirt, and dangly citrine earrings. Her bright orange hair looked freshly colored and her eyebrows perfectly drawn. Even at sixty-something she could have been a model. I, on the other hand, wore my usual size-sixteen stretch denim jeans and T-shirt straining under my ample bosom.

“I just dealt with a last-minute phone call. Give me a sec and I'll tell you all about it.” I settled down in one of the cozy blue overstuffed chairs in Lucy's casual living room.

Every few years she changed the décor in her home the same way she changed her daily outfits. This latest version evoked an elegant cabin: furniture upholstered in richly colored woolen fabrics, Navajo rugs, and a coffee table made of polished burled tree roots. Above the fireplace hung a reproduction of a yellow Remington painting of longhorn cattle. The room screamed Wyoming, where both Lucy and her husband, Ray, were born and raised.

“Did the call upset you? You look a bit peaky, dear.” That was Birdie Watson, Lucy's across-thestreet neighbor and the third member of our small sewing circle.

“I got a letter from an attorney in LA this morning asking me to call.” I fitted my multicolored Jacob's Ladder quilt in a fourteen-inch wooden hoop. The Jacob's Ladder block featured lots of little squares and larger triangles of contrasting light and dark materials. The more fabrics, the more interesting the quilt, and this one featured dozens of different cotton prints. I threaded a needle with red quilting thread and related the story about Harriet's death and my surprise at being named executor of her will. “The creepy thing is, she died more than ten months before they discovered her body.”

“How awful!” Birdie, naturally predisposed to worry about people, frowned and twisted the end of her long white braid. In her mid-seventies, Birdie looked like an old farmer. She always wore the same thing: white T-shirt (short sleeves in summer, long sleeves in winter), denim overalls, and Birkenstock sandals (with socks) to accommodate her arthritic knees.

Lucy handed me a cup of coffee with milk. “You must have been close for her to make you executor. Yet, I don't think I've ever heard you mention her name before.”

“We were best friends growing up.” I told them how our teenage friendship failed to survive our adult lifestyles. “After I moved to Encino, everyone in West LA forgot about me, including Harriet.”

Lucy shook her head. “Well, obviously she didn't forget about you. Do you know what happened to her husband?”

“I wish I knew more of the details. I have an appointment with the lawyer this afternoon to get poor Harriet buried. He said he'd explain everything then.”

Birdie tilted her head. “So you've decided to go through with becoming the executor? Not knowing what's involved?”

How could I say this without sounding morbid? “I want to do one last favor for an old friend.”

Lucy narrowed her eyes. “Uh-oh. Please tell me you're not going to get involved in another one of
those
again.”

Lucy's voice sounded more than a tad disapproving as she alluded to my recent penchant for discovering dead bodies and getting sucked into murder investigations. And both times the killers came after me. “This is way different, Lucy. First of all, the attorney never said anything about murder here. Second of all, being the executor of someone's estate only involves signing papers and selling stuff. There's nothing to worry about. What could be more straightforward?”

My redheaded friend shivered a little. “You know, Martha, I'm getting a strong feeling about this.” Lucy swore she possessed ESP and could tell when something bad was going to happen.

In the past, I'd dismissed her feelings as some kind of displaced anxiety. But if I were honest, I'd have to admit that in the last several months her warnings turned out to be valid. Still, the lawyer gave no indication poor Harriet's death was anything more than tragic and premature.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Lucy. Don't you think I've learned my lesson? Don't you think I'd run straight to the police at the first sign of something suspicious?”

Without hesitation, Lucy and Birdie responded in unison, “No!”