A Drunkard's Path Read online

  Table of Contents

  A PLUME BOOK

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  A PLUME BOOK

  A DRUNKARD’S PATH

  CLARE O’DONOHUE has been a television writer and producer for more than a decade. She spent four seasons as a producer on HGTV’s Simply Quilts, and is still trying to use up the fabric she was given while working on the show.

  PLUME

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. •

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, October

  Copyright © Clare O’Donohue, 2009

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  O’Donohue, Clare.

  A drunkard’s path : a Someday Quilts mystery / Clare O’Donohue. p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14052-9

  1. Quiltmakers—Fiction. 2. Quilting—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3615.D665D78 2009

  813’.6—22 2009004345

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my dad, who loved a good story

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I had a lot of fun writing this book, the second in the Someday Quilts series, and I have a lot of people to thank for making the work easier. First, my wonderful editor, Branda Malholtz, for her help with the manuscript. The incredible publicity team of Mary Pomponio and Marie Coolman. My amazing agent, Sharon Bowers of The Miller Agency, for answering every question and helping me navigate the world of publishing. Thanks also to Illinois Crime Scene Investigator Howard J. Dean for his invaluable help with the blood-spatter section of this book. Special thanks to my mom for helping me proof the manuscript. To my book club, Kara Thomas, Allison Stedman, and Joscelynne Feinstein, for our fascinating discussions on books I never would have found without them. Maria Kielar, for her friendship, photos, and for keeping me from being a starving artist. Alex Anderson, for her incredible support and enthusiasm. The gang in LA, including Laura Chambers, Mary Margaret Martinez, Alessandra Ascoli, Cam Frierson, Kelly Mooney, and Celia Bonaduce. The Chicago crowd (though some have moved on since), including my cousin Margaret Smith, Kevin Dorff, Ewa Tchoryk-Bardwell, Kelly Haran, and Karen Meier. The New Yorkers, including Amanda Young, Aimee Avallone, Bryna Levin, and Joi DeLeon. My dear friend Peggy McIntyre, her husband Jim, and kids Matt and MaryKate. V, for being there. My tea buddies and best friends, Mary, my sister, and Cindy, my sister by marriage. And my family, Dennis, Petra, Mikie, Jim, Con-nor, Grace, Jack, and Steven.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Can I get you a glass of wine?” The waiter smiled.

  I looked at my watch: 8:35. “No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t think my friend is coming.”

  I got up from the table and walked out of the restaurant with as much dignity as I could muster. I had been stood up. Stood up on our first date.

  As I walked toward home, an icy wind slapped me across the face. January is just a miserable month. The holidays are over and there is nothing but snow, cold, and long, lonely, dark nights. Now the one thing I had been looking forward to was over before it could begin.

  I reached Main Street, the center of Archers Rest, and had a decision to make. I could go home, or I could walk down to the police department and find out why the local police chief, Jesse Dewalt, had left me sitting in a restaurant for more than half an hour without even a phone call.

  He was supposed to be my friend, and he was the one who’d asked for this date. Actually, he’d asked me out three times before I finally said yes. But clearly it was a bad idea. I was getting over a broken engagement that had left me unwilling to trust my own judgment when it came to men. It was the reason I’d come to Archers Rest from New York City. After things fell apart, I realized that, even at twenty-six, I wasn’t sure what to do with my life. All I knew was that I wanted a fresh start. And I had one—new friends, new job, new home, and tonight, a possible new romance. But that hadn’t exactly worked out, had it?

  Maybe Jesse was still mourning the death of his wife, Lizzy. For two years, he’d been a single dad raising a five-year-old girl. Maybe it was too much for him, I thought. Maybe he wasn’t ready.

  If that was the case, what was the point in talking to him about it? I could just forget the whole thing and head back to my grandmother’s house where I w
as a non-rent-paying tenant. It might have been the sensible, even dignified, thing to do, but I couldn’t move my feet in that direction.

  It’s not that she wouldn’t be on my side, but Eleanor Cassidy is not what you would call a cuddly woman. She would wonder why I hadn’t confronted Jesse, why I scurried home instead of standing up for myself.

  A third alternative was to go to her quilt shop and sit for a couple of hours. I started working at the shop part time after I moved to town, and I had a couple of unfinished projects waiting there, which I could work on to pass the time. Then I could go home and mumble something to Eleanor and pretend the whole evening had gone as planned.

  It took a moment for me to realize that, as my mind was wandering toward quilting, my feet were headed directly to the police station. My feet were clearly braver than my head.

  Well, why not? I’m a modern woman in charge of my own destiny. “If a man stands me up, he is damn well going to hear about it,” I muttered to myself, even as I wondered if I could get past the station unnoticed.

  I couldn’t.

  “Hi, Nell.”

  I turned to see Greg, the youngest of the twelve uniformed officers in Archers Rest. He was also the most eager. Jesse once told me that Greg gave out more parking tickets than all the other officers combined. It was a source of amusement for Jesse until the day he found a parking ticket on his own car. It seems that Greg had spent twenty minutes waiting for the meter to expire, just so he could ticket the boss’s vehicle. Greg told me later that he was hoping Jesse would admire his diligence and promote him. Instead Jesse confined him to desk duty.

  “Looking for Jesse?” Greg asked.

  “Um, I guess,” I managed to get out.

  “He’s down by the river. He sent me back to the station to pick up some walkies.” Greg held up two walkie-talkies. “But I’m going back to help with the investigation.”

  “What investigation?” I asked, but Greg was in too much of a hurry to answer. I followed him for two blocks, from the station to where Main Street met the Hudson River. Then I kept following as he walked down the river’s edge for a quarter mile to the end of town. All the while I struggled to keep up with him without breaking into a full-out run or stopping to catch my breath.

  “Stay here,” Greg shouted when we reached the crime scene. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

  He had the energy and excitement of a kid showing off to his friends, and it got me a bit excited too. What was going on? I waited impatiently for Greg to come back with all the answers, but he returned a moment later, a failure.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m supposed to do crowd control.” He pointed toward the twenty or so people standing near the police barricade. “I thought this was my big chance to help with the investigation.”

  “You are helping.”

  I tried to be supportive even as I saw how defeated he looked. More than that, I understood. Standing on the sidelines wasn’t exactly my favorite activity either. I walked away to see if I could get a glimpse of any of the action.

  The river, normally a black hole on a cold January night, was bathed in light. The police cars had their lights flashing and their headlights on, and three twenty-foot temporary klieg lights were flooding the riverbank. In the middle of the light, Jesse and another man were standing next to something on the ground. I moved closer to get a better look but was immediately stopped by an officer I didn’t recognize. And after five months of living in Archers Rest, I’d met all the full- and part-time officers in town.

  “I’m Nell Fitzgerald,” I said. “I’m a friend of Chief Dewalt.”

  “He’s a little busy right now, miss,” the policeman said, obviously not swayed by my small-town connections. “Why don’t you call him later?”

  I looked down at the patch on his coat. Morristown Police. “You’re not from here,” I stated the obvious.

  “No, miss. We’re here to offer our assistance to the Archers Rest Police Department.”

  I nodded and moved about ten feet away, toward the area at the edge of Main Street where the crowd was gathering.

  “What is it?” I turned and saw Bernie, a member of my grandmother’s quilt club or, I should say, my quilt club, since the women had officially taken me on as a junior member. Junior, that is, until I finished my first quilt.

  “I have no idea. I can’t get in there to talk to Jesse.”

  “Whatever it is, it sure put a crimp in your date,” she said.

  I nodded. I hadn’t told Bernie I had a date with Jesse. In fact I’d sworn my grandmother to secrecy, but I wasn’t entirely surprised that word had gotten out. Archers Rest was a small town with a means of communication faster than the Internet—gossip. My guess was that when Jesse asked his mother to babysit, she told her good friend Bernie. And by now, I was sure, Bernie had told everyone else in the quilt club. I knew right then that our Friday meeting would be less about piecing and more about my love life. I’d have been annoyed, but, considering how things were going, I could use the advice.

  I tried to see what Jesse and the other man were talking about, what they were looking at, and why officers kept walking over and walking away, but I couldn’t see anything. Frustrated, I was about to give up and go home when I had a better idea.

  “I’m going to find Greg,” I said to Bernie.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, dear.” She smiled.

  I laughed. Bernie was the ex-hippie of the group and even now, in her sixties, was known for her outrageous behavior.

  “That leaves me a lot of room,” I said.

  I headed toward Greg, who was standing near an empty ambulance with two other Archers Rest officers.

  “Hey, guys,” I said. “Jesse and I had a date tonight. He stood me up and I’d like to yell at him.”

  It was a little embarrassing to admit that publicly, but I wasn’t about to stand around with the crowd when a little embarrassment might get me closer to the action. The three men laughed, exchanged looks, and seemed about to turn me down when Greg took a few steps toward me.

  “I’ll get you within yelling distance,” he said. “But put in a good word for me. You know, to get me back on the streets.”

  I nodded. Greg and I walked past the barricade and the officer from Morristown. Greg pointed me toward Jesse and then turned and walked back to the barricade. Whatever happened now, I was on my own. I took a few more strides, then stopped when I was about three feet away from Jesse and got my first look at what lay at his feet.

  It was the body of a young woman. She was pale and wet, I assumed from being pulled out of the river. Her pink dress clung to her. Her eyes were open and blank except that she looked, at least to me, frightened.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  Jesse looked up. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I waited at the restaurant and you didn’t show up, so . . .”

  Jesse walked over to me. He leaned in and said, almost too quietly for me to hear, “I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for not calling you.”

  “I don’t know. That looks like a pretty good excuse.” I nodded toward the body.

  He glanced momentarily back at the dead girl and then moved in front of me, blocking my view. “I’m going to be here all night, Nell. Go home and I’ll call you tomorrow. I promise.”

  I looked up at his earnest, intellectual face. His dark hair was rumpled and his glasses were perched crookedly on his nose. Something about the sad, serious expression and the way he squeezed my hand made me want to kiss him. But there was no point in wasting our first kiss in front of a corpse, the police force of two towns, and a growing crowd of spectators.

  “Get some sleep if you can,” I said.

  He smiled a little. “I will. Get a deputy to take you home.”

  I let go of his hand and started to turn, but I had to ask. “Who is she?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea. No one from town. And Chief Powell doesn’t k
now her either, so she must not be from around here.”

  I looked at the man I’d seen Jesse conferring with. He was large, over six feet tall, and looked to be in his forties, but with a crew cut that made him seem older. “Is he from Morristown? One of their cops tried to stop me from coming down here.”

  “He didn’t know who he was dealing with.” Jesse smiled. “But I do. And you’re not getting your nose in this. It’s probably just a suicide anyway, so I’ll wrap this up before I need your keen investigative skills.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” I smiled.

  He leaned toward me, his lips moving toward mine. Then he must have thought better of it. Instead he moved his mouth close to my ear and whispered, “Go home before I arrest you.”

  “Empty threats,” I said. But I moved back from the scene. I walked up from the river’s edge onto the pavement of Main Street, past the twenty or so people who were still watching, and toward the safety of my grandmother’s house.

  As I pulled my wool coat snugly around me, I found myself smiling at the thought of Jesse’s warm breath against my cheek. But before I lost myself in images of him, I remembered something that made me feel suddenly cold—the sight of that poor young woman lying on the bank of the icy Hudson River. I wondered what had made her do it. Or who.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Doesn’t that thing ring if someone’s calling, like a real phone?” my grandmother, Eleanor, asked.

  “Yes, unless it’s broken.”

  “Is it broken?”

  “Not as far as I know,” I sighed.

  “Well, then put it down. He’ll call when he gets to it.” She shook her head. “Besides, you want to make a nice impression on the people here, don’t you?”

  Reluctantly I dropped my cell phone into my purse and looked around. It was the sort of event I’d often dreamed of—an art opening, with some of the coolest, hippest artists in New York State in attendance. But instead of feeling excited, I felt out of place: an artist wannabe standing in the corner between my grandmother and her best friend, Maggie Sweeney. A week ago I’d read in The New York Times that the Coulter Art Center, the school I planned to attend, was holding an open house/art show. The article teased that a famous area artist, Oliver White, would be making an announcement regarding his collection. I desperately wanted to go, but I didn’t want to go alone, so Maggie and Eleanor volunteered.