Read Online Murder on a Starry Night: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery by Sally Goldenbaum - Free Book Online Page B

She’d chosen playful calico prints in pink, bright reds, greens and yellows.
    “I think it’s pretty cool myself,” Phoebe said.
    “Adele wanted at least one crib quilt. That was thoughtful of her, don’t you think?” Selma said. “And Phoebe is the perfect person to make it.”
    “Perfect, hah. Jimmy is getting worried. We’re about to move Jude and Emma into youth beds, and Jimmy knows it’s painful for me to have an empty crib in the house. When he saw me working on this block he like freaked. He turned as white as Eleanor’s hair.”
    Eleanor laughed and patted Phoebe’s hand. “You are a good mom, Phoebe dear. You should have twenty little ones.”
    “Twenty little what?” Susan asked, coming through the archway into the back room of Selma’s store.
    “Phoebe’s deciding her future,” Po said. “And while she does, let’s see your quilt, Susan. It’s for that gigantic king-sized bed in the tower suite, right?”
    Susan opened a cabinet and pulled out a stack of finished blocks. The pile of colors—yellow gold, greens, silvery blues and grays, and deep pinks—was remarkable, even without being set in a design. “Adele wanted something different in that room—something contemporary— so I didn’t use a traditional pattern.”
    “Susan, you could scatter those colors on a bed just like they are and you’d create a beautiful tapestry,” Po said, admiring the kaleidoscope of color.
    Susan smoothed out one of the blocks. “Adele—believe it or not—had a trunk filled with gorgeous silk fabrics. She’d collected them from her travels all over the world. We went through it together and I pulled these out for the quilt.”
    Selma stood next to Susan and looked closely at the design sketched on the piece of paper. “I think people will pay to stay in this room for the quilt alone. It’s gorgeous, honey.”
    The border would be strips of gray and blue pieced together, and in the center was a vibrant swirl of pink, spiraling out into yellows and golds. It was all movement and color. “I went over to check the paint color and figure out the border last night. The house is really coming along,” Susan said. “Kate went to keep me company.”
    “To nose around is more like it,” Kate said. “The Harrington house fascinates me. It always did, even when I was little, though it frightened me back then. The Harringtons were so private. And after his parents died, Ollie sometimes let the house go, with weeds all over. It reminded me of Boo Radley’s house in
To Kill a Mockingbird
—frightening and mysterious—but holding something decent. And now the house is beautiful, but that something decent is missing. And no one seems to know why. It’s sad. And unnerving, and until the murderer is caught, the real beauty of that house can’t come through. It just can’t.”
    “Kate,” Po said. The single word was a warning, and everyone in the room could hear it in Po’s soft tone.
    “There’s no danger, Po,” Susan said.
    “Someone has been murdered, Susan. We can’t take that lightly.”
    “But don’t you suspect it’s someone far removed from us—and probably not from Crestwood?” Susan said. “And whoever did it is a world away by now. The life Ollie lived here was such an ordinary one. It had to be someone distant, maybe someone from another part of the Harringtons’ life—”
    “Susan, you’re dreaming,” Eleanor said. “There are a half dozen people within a mile of here who might have killed Ollie—and in his or her own twisted mind, had reason to do it.”
    “And it’s usually the guy next door. The one you least expect,” Phoebe added enthusiastically. “Gus Schuette gave me a book to read on murder motives, and it’s not complicated at all. It’s pretty much for love or lust or money.”
    Kate laughed. “Phoebe, what are you reading books on murder motives for?”
    “Someone has to solve this crime,” Phoebe replied. “No offense against P.J. and his buds,