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Chapters (28)
  1. "Q" is for QUARRY
  2. Chapter 1
  3. Chapter 2
  4. Chapter 3
  5. Chapter 4
  6. Chapter 5
  7. Chapter 6
  8. Chapter 7
  9. Chapter 8
  10. Chapter 9
  11. Chapter 10
  12. Chapter 11
  13. Chapter 12
  14. Chapter 13
  15. Chapter 14
  16. Chapter 15
  17. Chapter 16
  18. Chapter 17
  19. Chapter 18
  20. Chapter 19
  21. Chapter 20
  22. Chapter 21
  23. Chapter 22
  24. Chapter 23
  25. Chapter 24
  26. Chapter 25
  27. Chapter 26
  28. Epilogue

I must have made a sound because Edna looked at me, saying, "What?"

"Where did you get this?"

"That was given to me by Justine's mother, Medora – Cornell's mother-in-law. Why?"

"I need to talk to her."

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

I stood on the front steps of Medora Sanders's house, a modest stucco box with a shallow overhang that served to shield the small concrete porch. The exterior was painted dark gray. The wood trim had shed flakes of white paint, like dandruff, on the shrubs planted along the foundation. At the end of the dirt drive there was a detached single-car garage with its door padlocked shut. Edna had allowed me to borrow the quilt and I carried it draped over one arm. The daisy-print fabric had been pieced into the quilt in seven adjoining sections. While it was true that the fabric might have been sold across the country, the coincidence was too striking to imagine it was unrelated.

I couldn't find a bell so I opened the wood-framed screen and knocked on the glass pane in the front door. A moment passed and then a woman peered out. She was thin and unkempt, with pale green eyes and pale fly-away hair. Her cheeks and the rim of her nose were patterned with spider veins. She smoothed her hair with a knobby-fingered hand, tucking a loose strand into a disordered chignon before she opened the door a crack. "Yes?"

"Mrs. Sanders?"

She wore faded jeans and a red nylon sweater with a runner up one sleeve where a loop of yarn had come loose. I could smell whiskey fumes seeping through her pores like toxic waste. She hesitated, apparently unwilling to confirm or deny her identity until she knew why I asked. "I don't buy door-to-door," she said.

I held up the quilt. "I'm not selling anything. I came to talk to you about this."

Her gaze shifted, though her manner remained fuzzy and her eyes were slightly out of focus. She looked like someone chronically inebriated. "Where'd you get that?"

"Edna McPhee let me borrow it. I'm returning it later, but I have some questions for you first."

"Why'd she send you over here?"

"She said since you made the quilt, you might have some information. May I come in?"

Medora thought about that briefly, probably wishing I'd go somewhere else. "I hope this won't take long. I got other things to do."

She opened the door and I stepped directly into the living room, I which was small and cramped, with an acoustic-tile ceiling and a stingy-looking brick fireplace. On the mantel there was a cluster of statuettes: angels, milkmaids, and coy-looking kids with the toes of their shoes turned in.

Medora closed the door, saying, "That Edna's a pill. I don't know how Justine manages to put up with her."

"The two of you don't get along?"