The Double Cross Read online

  Table of Contents

  A PLUME BOOK THE DOUBLE CROSS

  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 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

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  A PLUME BOOK THE DOUBLE CROSS

  CLARE O’DONOHUE is a freelance television writer and producer. She has worked worldwide on a variety of shows for the Food Network, the History Channel, and truTV, among others. An avid quilter, she was also a producer for HGTV’s Simply Quilts.

  ALSO BY CLARE O’DONOHUE

  The Lover’s Knot

  A Drunkard’s Path

  PLUME

  Published by 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 Books (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, 2010 All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCAREGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  O’Donohue, Clare.

  The double cross : a someday quilts mystery / Clare O’Donohue.

  p. cm

  eISBN : 978-1-101-46098-6

  1. Quilters—Fiction. 2. Quilting—Fiction. 3. Quilts—Fiction. 4. Murder—

  investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3615.D665D68 2010

  813’.6—dc22 2010014242

  Kirch

  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 WRITETO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP(USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Sr. Mary Madonna, Una Moran, Kathleen Sweeney, Una Smith,

  and Betty Sheehan. Thank you for being such wonderful aunts,

  role models, and friends.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks, first of all, to the many people who have read the Someday Quilts Mysteries, and especially those who have taken the time to contact me. There have been days that a supportive e-mail kept me from hurling my computer across the room. Also thanks to my editor, Becky Cole, for her patience, support, great advice, and unwavering cheerfulness; Mary Pomponio, for her excellent, as always, publicity skills; and to all the unsung heroes in sales and marketing who get the books on the shelves. To my agent, Sharon Bowers, thanks for helping me chart a course for a, hopefully, long career. To Illinois Crime Scene Investigator Howard J. Dean, and Dr. Brian Peterson, Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for Milwaukee County, for their help with the murder part of the story, and to Debby Brown for showing me around a long arm quilting machine. While these three people provided invaluable help, I do want to say that if any of the details are wrong in the book, the fault lies with me. Thanks also to Alex Anderson, for her friendship and support, and to the folks at AccuQuilt for helping with the die-cut section of the book, and their enthusiasm for the entire Someday Quilts Mysteries series. I’d also like to thank my mother, Sheila O’Donohue, for helping with the manuscript, Jim McIntyre, for being such a good sport, and his family Peggy, Matt, and MaryKate for all the encouragement. Thanks to Maria Kielar for the photos, and Margaret Smith and Brian Mc-Donagh for the Sunday sessions. Thanks to all my friends, who have patiently listened to me talk about the series. And finally, thanks, as always, to Kevin, V, and my family—Dennis, Petra, Mikie, Mary, Jim, Connor, Grace, Jack, Cindy, and Steven.

  PROLOGUE

  I crouched behind the largest tree I could find and tried to steady my breathing. It’s startling how loud breathing can be when you’re trying to be quiet. My hands were shaking and I didn’t know how long my legs would hold, but my life depended on it. The thought made my hands shake more.

  I listened. There was nothing but the sounds of a few birds. I knew it was probably pointless but I took my cell phone out of my pocket. There was one bar, so I took a chance and dialed Jesse. Just as it started to ring, the call was dropped. No signal, only the quiet of country life that my grandmother had been extolling a few days ago. I wrapped my fingers around the phone, just in case.

  I heard leaves rustle. I tried to think. How close was the sound? Did I have time to run or should I just hope for the best and stay hidden behind the tree? I thought about every action movie I’d ever seen, hoping it would inspire a plan, but nothing came to me. All I could think of was Bernie’s warning about going into the woods. And my unfini
shed journal quilt—the one that was supposed to depict my life as I hoped it would become.

  My heart was pounding. I looked around for a possible escape route. I wasn’t sure my feet would move even if I wanted them to, so I waited. More noise. But this wasn’t birds. This was something else. Footsteps. I held my breath and prayed they would move in the other direction.

  Then nothing. The noise, the footsteps, had stopped. I realized I’d caught my foot in some tangled vines and my ankle was itching. I tried to ignore it and concentrate on the footsteps. I’d have plenty of time to scratch my ankle once I got out of this. If I got out of this.

  The footsteps started up again and for a moment moved toward me. I held my breath. Then, just when they seemed on top of me, they stopped and seemed to move in the other direction.

  “Keep going,” I thought. “Just let me get out of here and I will never stick my nose where it doesn’t belong. I will live a long life making quilts and drawing pictures and staying out of trouble.”

  Then the footsteps were gone. Definitely gone. I stood up, took a deep breath, and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction. I didn’t care that tree branches were slapping me across the face as I ran. I didn’t care that my feet were getting muddy or that I had bitten so hard into my lip that it was beginning to bleed. I just wanted to get out of the woods and back to the inn as fast as I could.

  I could see the hiking trail that led back to the inn when my cell phone suddenly rang. The sound was so startling that I nearly dropped it.

  “Nell?” I heard Jesse’s worried voice on the other end.

  “Jesse,” I whispered. “I’m near where we found the body. I’m in trouble. I’m heading toward the inn.”

  “I’m coming to get you,” he said. “And Nell, I . . .”

  The signal was lost again, and with it Jesse’s comforting voice. My heart sank.

  “Don’t let that be the last time I talk to him,” I silently prayed.

  Then I saw the gun.

  “Jesse’s on his way right now,” I called out as defiantly as I could, but even I could hear the fear in my voice.

  “Well, he’s going to be too late,” was the response.

  The gun was pointed directly at me. I wasn’t going to just stand there and get shot, so I turned and ran toward the trail. I’d taken ten steps when I heard a loud sound.

  After that all I could feel was pain.

  CHAPTER 1

  Two Weeks Earlier

  It’s the closest two quilters have ever come to killing each other. “I’m not doing this to hurt you,” Susanne tried to explain.

  “You’ve betrayed me,” Bernie spat back.

  “You’re being an old fool.” Susanne sat back in her chair and looked to the rest of the group for support. The rest of us looked elsewhere.

  It had started innocently enough. Just an hour earlier I’d closed up Someday Quilts for our usual Friday meeting. A small group of us met at my grandmother’s quilt shop each week to work on our quilts, eat fattening foods, and catch up on gossip. To an outsider we might have appeared to be an odd group. There was me, a twenty-six-year-old aspiring artist and part-time worker at the shop; my grandmother, Eleanor Cassidy, the shop’s owner; Carrie, in her midforties, a mother of two and owner of the local coffee shop; Natalie, my age and already a mom with a second child on the way; her mother, Susanne; and Bernie, the ex-hippy pharmacist and our most laid-back member—until now. The only member missing was Maggie, my grandmother’s oldest friend, who was in Ohio awaiting the birth of her first great-grandchild. On the surface we had little in common, and we certainly didn’t seem like a group of close friends, but we all quilted. And with that to share, the rest came easy.

  Natalie, the shop’s newest part-time employee, had arrived early so she and I could make the coffee and arrange the chairs. Then we set a copy of the Winston Weekly newspaper on each person’s seat. I was expecting lots of excitement once everyone had a chance to see it, but excitement was hardly the right word for what I got.

  “What do you want us to read?” my grandmother asked as she sat down. My grandmother, Eleanor, was part role model, part bulldog. A wonderful quilter, a strong business owner, a loving grandma (though never one to let me get away with anything), she was the person I hoped to be one day. Even her look was worth emulating. She had let her hair turn a no-fuss gray and cut it short, but stylishly. Her clothes, a pair of dark jeans and a pink oxford shirt, created the same pretty-but-practical effect.

  “We have a celebrity in our midst,” I told her, to pump up the enthusiasm.

  “A missing dog?” asked Eleanor. “Why is that a celebrity?”

  “It’s not the dog,” I said.

  Eleanor rolled her eyes and tossed the paper to me. I scanned it. The front-page story was about a dog that had gone missing while out on a hunt. The owner described it as a kidnapping. Apparently it was the second dog to disappear in less than a month, and the owners were convinced it wasn’t a coincidence.

  I flipped to page two, then page three. There it was. I handed the paper back to my grandmother.

  Just as I did, Carrie found the article in her copy and read it to the rest of us: “ ‘Award-winning quilter Susanne Hendrick will be teaching a class called Journal Quilting at the newly opened Patchwork Bed-and-Breakfast owned by Rita and George Olnhausen. It will be a weeklong class, beginning April second, that will encourage participants to express their thoughts in fabric and explore techniques beyond basic quilting. Beginners and advanced quilters welcome. Contact George Olnhausen for class details and enrollment.’ ”

  “That’s amazing,” declared Carrie. “You’re well on your way to a teaching career.”

  “I love teaching classes here at the shop,” Susanne said to my grandmother, “but I want to do something beyond Someday Quilts. You know, stretch myself a bit.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m thrilled to see you taking on a new project,” Eleanor told her. “And soon I’ll be able to say that a world-famous quilt teacher got her start at my shop.”

  “I can’t believe how far we’ve all come toward realizing our dreams.” Carrie pointed out the window toward Jitters, her coffee shop across the street. “I’ve got my place, Natalie is five-months pregnant with baby number two, Nell is busy pursuing an art career, and now Susanne has a weeklong quilt retreat. Everyone is doing what they love.”

  And that was it. Bernie slammed the paper on the chair and headed toward the door. “I’m so happy for everyone,” she snapped. “I guess it doesn’t matter that it comes at my expense.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, and looking around it was clear that neither Natalie nor Carrie did, either. But the others seemed to understand. Eleanor and Susanne jumped up to stop Bernie from leaving and to coax her back into her chair. They spoke quietly to her for several minutes, and it seemed as though the crisis would pass. Then suddenly Bernie was upset all over again, until finally Susanne seemed to give up trying to explain and just got angry. After Susanne called Bernie an “old fool,” everyone was clearly at a loss for what to do.

  “It’s a long time ago,” my grandmother said repeatedly, but it seemed to offer no comfort.

  “So it doesn’t matter anymore?” Bernie shouted.

  “Do you regret your life?” Eleanor asked sharply.

  “Parts of it. Don’t you?”

  Susanne and Eleanor exchanged glances; then Eleanor’s expression softened. She sat next to Bernie and quietly stroked her hand.

  “Bernie, what would it take for you to let this go?” Eleanor asked.

  Bernie looked at my grandmother with a coldness in her eyes I’d never seen before and never knew existed in her. “It would help if they were both dead.”

  For a moment the rest us sat in stunned silence, afraid to look at Bernie and unable to look away. Finally Carrie looked at me, obviously hoping for answers, but I shrugged. I was new to the group, having moved to Archers Rest from New York City only seven months before. Carrie had
been a member for just over two years. Whatever was going on with Bernie, it obviously predated our inclusion in the quilting circle.

  I looked over at Susanne, who seemed on the verge of tears. An expert art quilter, she’d won awards, taught classes, and helped those in need. She doted on her grandson and would never hurt a friend. If anything, Susanne’s biggest fault was her extreme loyalty to those she loved.

  “If you don’t understand why I would want to try something new . . . ,” Susanne tried again.

  “I understand why you want to teach. I just don’t understand why you have to teach there,” Bernie shouted.

  “I told you.” Susanne was speaking slowly but insistently. “They found me. That George of yours called me and asked if I’d do it. How could I turn it down?”

  “Because you’re my friend. That’s what friends do. Everyone here understands what I’m talking about.” Bernie looked at me.

  I smiled weakly. “I guess I don’t understand,” I admitted. “Your high school boyfriend and his wife have a bed-and-breakfast in the Adirondacks, and they want to attract quilters, so they’re offering classes and opening a little shop,” I said, trying to piece together the story from what I’d just overheard. “But why is it wrong for Susanne to teach a class there?”

  “Thank you,” Susanne sang out.

  Bernie sighed. “I thought if anyone would understand what it feels like to be dumped it would be you, Nell.”

  For lack of a better response, I smiled. Then I got up and walked to the counter to grab a cookie from the batch Natalie had baked for the meeting. Behind me, I could hear my grandmother.

  “That was unnecessary, Bernadette Avallone,” Eleanor said. “I really don’t see how Nell’s romantic issues are fair game. It’s hard enough for her without you throwing it in her face.”

  Nell’s romantic issues. That was a nice way of putting it. I’d run away from my life in the city after my fiancé took up with the woman I considered my best friend. Just the other day, I’d heard they’d become engaged. Maybe it wouldn’t have bothered me so much if my most recent romance wasn’t faltering. I’d been dating the town’s police chief, Jesse Dewalt, until the relationship ended because, as Jesse put it, I “couldn’t stop interfering in police investigations.” I was 0 for 2, and I guess that translates into “romantic issues.”