Read Online Make Quilts Not War by Arlene Sachitano - Free Book Online Page A

noticed, but there are life-sized statues of historic figures every so many feet around the outside walls of the main room. There are exit doors between each pair of statues. The one nearest my quilt was propped open to let some air in.”
    “Okay,” Harriet said and turned. “Let’s go see if it’s still open.”
    It took a few minutes, and they had to scale a thigh-high cement support wall, but the trio found the door Jenny had described, and it was still partially open. Jenny pulled it wider and stepped inside.
    “No!” she screamed, over and over again.
    Harriet and Lauren hurried through the door, pushing her aside so they could see. Someone was lying on the platform in front of Jenny’s quilt.
    Jenny made her way to the small stage, and as a few people recognized her, they stepped aside. Harriet followed and could see Pamela flat on her back, a paramedic kneeling beside her, lifting first one eyelid then the other, shining a pocket penlight in each eye in turn. He pulled away from the body and shook his head from side to side, once.
    Pamela was gone.

Chapter 10
    It was never a good thing when the first responders stopped moving quickly and started picking up their refuse. That was what was happening as Harriet watched Jenny run her hand over her quilt.
    Pamela had been standing beside it when she was shot, but now, as she lay on the stage surrounded by torn packages and discarded tubing, there was at first little evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened. She could have decided to take a nap, aside from the small dark hole in the middle of her forehead and an expanding halo of blood.
    Jenny had neatly sidestepped Pamela’s body when she went up the stairs to the platform. She hadn’t looked at the body since; her eyes had remained fixed on her quilt.
    “You ladies need to leave.” Officer Hue Nguyen approached the stage where Harriet and Lauren waited for Jenny to finish her inspection, if that’s what she was doing.
    “We were just checking on Jenny’s quilt,” Harriet explained. It sounded strange to her, so she could just imagine how weird it seemed to Officer Nguyen. A woman had been murdered, and they were checking on a quilt.
    “We’ll leave now,” Lauren said. “Come on, Jenny, we have to leave so the officer can do his job.”
    Jenny didn’t appear to have heard.
    “Jenny!” Harriet said in a firm tone. “We have to go now.”
    Jenny shivered then turned and came down the steps, rejoining her friends. The trio started to leave, but Nguyen stopped them.
    “Are you three involved in this?” he asked without a hint of friendliness in his tone. He had been the responding officer several times in the past when Harriet was involved in misadventures. It was amazing to her that he treated them as if they were the criminals every time, even though it hadn’t once been true.
    “No,” Lauren said and turned toward the door they’d come in through.
    A part of Harriet wanted to follow her without saying anything else, but she couldn’t.
    “This quilt is Jenny’s. Until a few minutes ago, she was standing on this stage and answering questions about it,” she said. “Lauren and I went outside, and Jenny was in the restroom when this…” She gestured toward Pamela. “…happened.”
    Lauren poked her in the arm.
    “Don’t volunteer anything,” she whispered.
    “I’ve got your names,” Nguyen said, tapping his notebook against his palm. “The detectives will contact you for your statements.”
    “We don’t have statements,” Lauren said. “We weren’t here, and we didn’t see anything.”
    Nguyen glared at her.
    “I know, don’t leave town,” she said with a smirk. “I watch TV.”
    It was Harriet’s turn to take Lauren by the arm and pull her to the door. Jenny followed silently, her face blank.
    “We better find Aunt Beth and Mavis and tell them what happened,” Harriet said as they circled around the building and on to the courtyard. The crowd was buzzing