Read Online Murders on Elderberry Road: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery by Sally Goldenbaum - Free Book Online Page A

that she sometimes found it difficult to hold her tongue when strong emotion gripped her. And she felt strongly about this issue, mostly because she didn’t want her dear friend Selma in any danger. And if someone killed Owen in Selma’s store for reasons other than theft, then danger might still lurk there in the jumble of fabric bolts and sewing notions. Po wanted the danger faced, and then erased.
    “Well, frankly, it doesn’t make sense to me either, Po.” Selma picked up a metal can filled with straight pins and handed it to Phoebe who was pinning a strip of bright green polka dot fabric to a lush lavender print. Her star matched her personality to a T, Po had commented earlier — bright, daring, and sparkling.
    Selma went on. “I for one could have killed Owen a time or two — of late, he’d been pushing for that fancy brick sidewalk, in spite of my very vocal protests — but I didn’t. That’s not to say, though, that he might have pushed others far enough that they did.”
    “There’s a lot of gossip brewing around town,” Phoebe said. “Even at the park where I take Jude and Emma. Greta Janssen — she has a two-year-old and goes to Reverend Gottrey’s church — she said that she thought the Reverend was having a hard time looking sad about the whole thing. Owen Hill was about to pull the plug on the endless donations he and Mary made to the church.” She pulled a small ironing board up to the other end of the table and plugged in the iron.
    Maggie joined in. “Hans Broker, he lives just a street over.” Maggie pointed with her head toward the back window and the large comfortable homes that lay beyond the thick border of bushes. “He had his lab, Sparky, in for shots last week, and he said there’d been activity in this alley on and off for awhile now. Night noises when there shouldn’t have been. I guess Sparky barked like crazy a few nights, according to Hans, and then finally got used to it.”
    “So he heard something on the night Owen died?” Kate asked.
    “Well, that’s where his story lost a little ground. He wasn’t sure about that, and yet it was so warm that night that he must have had his windows open. Everyone did.”
    Po stood and held a piece of royal purple cotton up to the natural light. It would be perfect for one of her stars. She set it down next to her coffee cup, pleased. “I don’t mean to put a damper on Hans’ story,” she said, focusing back on the conversation. “Hans is a sweet man, but he wears two hearing aids. And at that time of night both of them were probably on his bedside table, right beside his empty glass of Jack Daniels. Now Sparky is credible, but there are a thousand squirrels that live back there, not to mention the beautiful black cat that I ran into that awful morning.” Po sat down and fingered the fabric in front of her.
    “Those night-time noises could have been made by Wesley Peet,” Selma said.
    “The security guard?” Kate asked. She sat down at Selma’s machine and pushed the pedal, stitching together the small rectangles and squares that would be her flying geese — the rays of her star. “He’s one creepy dude. He skulks around in the shadows and rarely speaks. Honestly, he scares me, Selma.”
    “He’s frightening,” Susan agreed. She had slipped into a chair and was helping Eleanor line up her fabric against a paper template. Eleanor had decided to paper piece, insisting that the points of her star would be absolutely perfect. “Wesley is usually around when I’m closing up.” She held the template and fabric up to the light to make sure the alignment was perfect. Her unfinished thought hung there in the air awkwardly.
    Selma took a pin out of her mouth. “Wesley’s an odd duck, that’s true. The ESOC hired him last year after that unfortunate incident with Susan.”
    All eyes turned toward Susan, who paled at the attention.
    Selma went on. “Some guy began to harass Susan as she was closing up the store late