2 Knot What It Seams by Elizabeth Craig Read Free Book Online Page A

the sight, you know. I had a vision of a dark figure going underneath the car.”
    “You saw a dark figure going underneath Jo’s Jeep? When?” asked Beatrice.
    Opal shook her head vigorously. “No, no. I just saw it. In my head. With the sight.” She gave a shudder as if shaking off a particularly sticky spirit.
    “Her gift , Beatrice,” said Meadow in a warning voice. That’s right. Meadow hadn’t wanted her to upset Opal for fear of paranormal repercussions.
    Meadow was already pulling her phone out of her pocketbook. This was going to be interesting. Ramsay clearly had no intention of calling the accident murder or doing much of an investigation of it. He was likely only wanting to go back home, get out of the rain, and relax with some restorative classical literature.
    Meadow stuck her finger in her ear to focus on her phone call over the high volume of the excited voices in the room. “Ramsay? It’s me. Hey, Opal says that you need to treat the accident like a crime scene. That’s right.” She paused for a minute and listened hard to the phone. “She does know something about it, yes. She saw the crime happen! Opal saw the Jeep being tampered with!” Another pause. “No, no . . . she saw it in her head. She has the sight, you know.” Meadow frowned. “We lost our connection.”
    Naturally.
    “Oh no,” gasped Meadow, reaching up to clutch at her throat in dismay. “Jo’s husband, Glen, is coming in.”
    Sure enough, a rain-soaked and rumpled man wearing old khakis and a tired-looking button-down shirt was shaking off the rain and wrestling with a wet umbrella. He turned to walk farther into the room, then stopped with a puzzled expression as he took in the quilters’ horrified expressions. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
    * * *
    As he was the only true official in the room, the onerous task of informing Glen of his wife’s untimely demise had fallen to Booth Grayson, who handled the job with a brisk efficiency that Glen likely handled better than the weepiness of various motherly quilters. Already upset by the phone call, Meadow was a red-eyed disaster from the morning’s drama. It was the final straw to have Glen come by the quilt show to support his wife, only to discover her death. Now, plied with iced tea and brownies, Meadow had subsided into a quieter state.
    Booth left the quilt show with relief, glad to have an excuse . . . and a ride. Since Glen wanted to see the accident site, Booth offered to drive him in Glen’s car. After the two left, Meadow said sadly to Beatrice, “And now we need to find another member for the Village Quilters again. Back in the same spot! It’s such a tragedy!” She loudly blew her nose.
    “I’m still not convinced it’s totally necessary to find another member,” said Beatrice, wanting to avoid the whole hashing-through process that had gone on before Meadow had decided to ask Jo to fill the empty spot. “Besides,” she said in a low, pointed voice, “this is hardly the time to figure that out.”
    Meadow clearly needed distracting. Karen, who’d been pacing up and down the long wall of quilts, joined them again. Beatrice said, “Don’t you need to make a decision about the quilt show? You’re one of the organizers, right? Do we continue on or try to regroup and set everything up for another day?”
    Karen said, “I think we decided it would be a lot of time and expense to set everything up again and rent the space, didn’t we? But you and the other organizer need to find a substitute judge.”
    Meadow started blinking her eyes quickly and giving suspicious-sounding sniffs—the mere threat of tears made Beatrice leap into action. “Meadow!” she cried. “You’ll make a fantastic judge. You haven’t got a quilt entered, anyway, have you? You know how to be fair and impartial, right?”
    Meadow sniffed a little and affected a noble expression.
    “You’ll be perfect. Just tell the other judges the change in plans, and get to