Quilt By Association

'Is this place bugged?” Mavis asked.

Nurse Heather raised her eyebrows and tilted her head slightly to the side.

'Of course it is.” Mavis answered her own question.

'We prefer to think of it as patient monitoring,” Heather said.

'Come on, Mavis,” Aunt Beth said. “We need to make sure everyone who needs to has a decoy dog-bone block on display. Besides, we need to catch the rest of the Threads up on last night's doin's'

'We'll be back in a couple of hours, honey.” Mavis gathered her bags and followed Beth out of the room.

Harriet fell into a dreamless sleep that ended when a doctor she'd never met came in an hour and a half later to check her progress.

'Hi, I'm Doctor Eisner.'

Harriet noted his blond hair, brown eyes and stocky build and the irrational thought he was the polar opposite of Aiden came unbidden to her mind. It has to be the drugs, she thought. That and the fact he looked as young as Aiden, if not younger, if that was possible given the man had to have at least eight years of college and medical school and all that other stuff doctors had to do.

'How are you feeling?'

'Better, I think.” She gasped when he touched her lower back.

'That's what I thought, still pretty tender.'

'Only when I breathe,” she said with a weak smile.

'Well, you're smiling, that's a good sign. I've looked at all your scans, and you have a nasty bruise on your kidney, but it doesn't appear to be lacerated. I'm keeping you one more day to stabilize your fluids and control the load on your kidneys. And I'd like to see the blood in your urine gone before we let you go.

'Your ankle looks like a straightforward sprain, but since your reputation precedes you, we're going to put you in a non-walking cast for a week that will insure you stay off it, and at the same time give your kidney time to heal. I'm serious-you have to rest.'

The smile froze on Harriet's face, and she didn't say anything for a minute.

'That's good news,” Dr. Eisner said. “If you'd been hit any harder, we'd be in recovery right now, talking about how you were going to live with one kidney.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to seem ungrateful. I've just got a lot of work to do, and this isn't going to help.” And I need to find out who did this to me.

'I'll be back to see you tomorrow. Get some rest. The nurses can give you pain medication if you need it. Just use your buzzer.'

'Thanks,” she said and yawned, sleepiness once again taking control of her body.

'If you follow our advice, stay off your foot, control your liquids, and get plenty of rest, in a few weeks, you'll be as good as new.'

Harriet was asleep before he'd finished his warning.

The doctor was serious about Harriet getting rest, and although she used every argument she could come up with to change his mind, he prevailed. He cut her visitation time to ten minutes per hour every other hour for the duration of her stay. Aunt Beth and Aiden both grumbled about being excepted from those limits, but the doctor was adamant.

Just as he'd said, Harriet was there for another full day, and had to admit she did feel more rested as a result of his strict policy. Nurse Heather told her she would have probably been there another two days otherwise.

Chapter 32

An unmarked police car was parked in Harriet's driveway when Mavis pulled up to the studio door. She and Beth had decided the Town Car was better suited than Beth's Beetle to transport their patient home.

Harriet was maneuvering out of the car and onto her crutches when Detective Morse got out of the unmarked and approached her.

'How are you feeling?'

'Like you care?” Harriet snapped.

'She's doing much better, thank you,” Aunt Beth said and glared at her niece.

'I was hoping we could talk.'

'So you can ask me why I called nine-one-one after I killed Rodney, whacked myself in the back and jumped into the window well?'

'That's only one theory,” Morse said in a weary voice. “I'd be interested in hearing what actually happened.'

'Come on, honey,” Mavis said as she came around the car. “You need to get inside and put your foot up.” She carried Harriet's purse along with her own and their quilting bags.

'We put the gray chair and ottoman in the studio,” Aunt Beth said, referring to the upholstered easy chair and its footstool, which she'd gotten Aiden to move from the upstairs TV room. She put her hand under Harriet's elbow to help her negotiate the steps.

'Your aunt and I figured it would be easier if you only had to climb the stairs at bedtime,” Mavis explained.

Harriet stopped. “I know you're trying to help, but these crutches are hard enough with one driver.'

Beth released her niece's elbow and backed up a step.

'Fine,” she said.

'I'm sorry. This is hard for all of us.'

'Just go on inside,” Beth said. She turned back to Detective Morse. “I'm not sure this is a good time.'

'There isn't going to be a good time,” Morse told her. “There is now, here, with me, while Detective Sanders is in court on another case, or we can wait until later when he's not otherwise engaged and is available to give his full attention to this matter.'

Beth sighed. “I'll put the tea on.'

Harriet hobbled into the studio, carefully crutching to the large gray chair. Aunt Beth had set three bed pillows on the ottoman. She gasped as she tried to lean down and pick one up.

'Oh, honey, let me do that,” Mavis said and arranged the pillows at Harriet's direction then helped her sit in the chair, propping her injured leg.

When Harriet was settled, she indicated Detective Morse should take one of the wingback chairs. Mavis and Beth had removed two of the worktables from the corner and created a new sitting area with the gray chair, the two wingback chairs and the piecrust table from the original space.

'Nice touch,” Harriet said, looking down at the hand-braided circular rug the chairs sat on. Mavis had brought it over from its storage spot in her garage, a product of yet another craft hobby that had fallen out of style, along with the macrame plant holders and painted ceramic geese she and Beth had made in the late nineteen-seventies.

'We thought it made the area look a little warmer,” Mavis said, also looking down at the rug.

Detective Morse cleared her throat. “Would it be okay if we talk about what happened?'

'I'll go check on the tea,” Mavis said, heading for the door to the kitchen.

'Do you want to start at the beginning?” Detective Morse asked when she and Harriet were alone.

'There's not a lot to tell. I went to Joseph's, he didn't answer the door, I saw movement in a window, went to look in the window, got whacked in the back, sprained my ankle and had a dead guy fall on me.'

'We can make this easy, or we can make it hard, but I'm not going anywhere until I get all my questions answered to my satisfaction.'

'Okay,” Harriet said, drawing the word out. “What more do you want to know?'

'Why did you go to see Joseph?'

Harriet explained that she hadn't planned the stop and had only done it in response to the movement in the lighted window.

'Who did you see move across the window?'

She explained again about the shadow, and that she only saw movement in the ground-level window with her