Ada Unraveled Read online

  Ada Unraveled

  a Quilted Mystery novel

  Barbara Sullivan

  Smashwords Edition

  copyright 2015 Barbara Sullivan

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  A Thank You

  Additional Books by Barbara Sullivan

  Brief History

  Connect With Barbara Sullivan

  Dedication & Acknowledgement

  “Fibers form and twist

  Secrets dormant lie

  In the fibrous myst

  Distant mem’ries dye

  Children ever cry.”

  From the Latter-day Poems of Ruth McMichaels, 1934-.

  PART ONE

  dry goods

  Chapter 1: Eddie 1

  June

  His mom brought him a friend. He was astonished, frozen on his bed. He couldn’t even remember what his tongue and lips were for. He watched his mom leave them alone, sneaking upstairs with a smile on her old face. What was she thinking? What was she doing? He couldn’t have guests. He was in a prison, a cage. And he was half out of his mind with the drugs they forced him to take.

  For a moment he knew his fluttering heart would stop—completely—gallop right to the end of his life. He wasn’t healthy. He was a pile of flab lying on a…but she’d changed the sheets, hadn’t she? She had made him put a nice shirt on. Even ran a razor over his chin…as if he had man-hair.

  His new friend was a pretty girl with funny hair. She was smiling. She turned off the TV and spoke to him in a youthful voice that turned his bed into a magic carpet. Doing all the talking so he didn’t have to, she was almost giggly but not, almost flirty but not. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard a feminine voice, other than his mom’s. And then he did.

  Vera. The last time had been with Vera, of course.

  This girl spoke in weather, talked about the June gloom. Her eyes flitted about the room…cell…nervously. Her smile faltered as she took in his living space. It was a freaky, underground, oversized dog pen, for cripes sake.

  Her darting eyes were like little blue hummingbirds searching for nectar, but there weren’t no nectar down here, little darlin’.

  After a while she left him with a promise to return, like a gift he could open later, whenever he was lonely. He let himself pretend that maybe this spectacular change in his routine meant he would soon be free. He settled back on his cot, letting his floating brain fantasize about freedom. He didn’t float for long.

  Noisome sounds of his parents fighting wakened him in an urgent sweat. They were upstairs, probably on the second floor--their bedroom. They wouldn’t involve him if he stayed quiet.

  He prayed to God for the sounds to stop, for his mother to be all right, but He wasn’t listening. How else could He have ignored the brutality that regularly befell his mother all these years?

  His mother’s familiar pleading voice grew louder. Impotent tears trickled down the sides of his face. He looked toward the little bookcase she’d set up for him many years ago, remembering the beating she’d gotten when she had done that.

  The same books she’d brought him then were sitting there now. He’d read them repeatedly, to the point of memorizing some. He read the titles again now. It comforted him at times like these. That had been back before they started him on the second drug. The drug that took reading away from him.

  The Odyssey.

  Dante’s Inferno.

  Beowulf.

  Tale of Two Cities.

  “What could be the harm Luke? She’s…not normal…right? She doesn’t want sex with him.”

  He covered his head with his mother’s quilt, shut his eyes tight. He couldn’t hear his father’s response, but from two floors down he heard the rueful rhythm begin, embroidered by his mother’s quiet cries of pain.

  Stifled so her son wouldn’t hear.

  But he heard. He always heard.

  Pound, pound, pound.

  Long after the ritual blows ceased her cries had flown down the stairs to him, bouncing off the twists and turns, finding him under his blanket. This time was different. This time she had begged and called for him.

  What was she thinking? He couldn’t help her. He was locked up like a dumb animal.

  The pleas became whimpers. The whimpers stilled. And then he thought he heard her whisper, I’m sorry Eddie. But it will be over soon.

  He listened harder, his ears searching from under his blanket, searching for the sound of her breathing. But his heart was pounding so hard he couldn’t find her.

  Eventually his racing heart quieted and the house descended into a malevolent silence. His blanketed eyes slowly shut. He dozed—slipping into his half in and half out sleep. Half terrorized and half calm.

  New sounds forced him back.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  This time not fists driven into flesh, this time the bouncing sound of a thing being dragged down the upper staircase.

  A once living thing?

  His heart raced ahead of the truth. He opened his eyes under his covers, searching blindly for a different meaning in the dark underside of the comforter. The kitchen door squeaked open and shut hard.

  Noises came to him from out by the shed. Even the frogs and grasshoppers were holding their breaths. Then chopping sounds of shoveling came to him, sounds of earth being dug up and tossed aside.

  His father was way back behind the house, maybe as far away as the graveyard. The clouds were low tonight. He knew sounds traveled farther bouncing off their soft underbellies.

  Finally his mind cleared enough to force him from his bed and he went to his high cellar window to peer into the foggy night. To see what he could see.

  His father was standing right there, his cruel face aglow in the light from the kitchen! He was gripping her hair in both hands, pulling her away, her eyes and mouth open in sightless, soundless witness to the wretchedness that had been her life. He shrank away, moved backwards till he bumped into his bed--not far, just a few feet.

  There was not a shred of humanity on his father’s face. He was dragging his dead mother to her grave, and his face showed nothing but savage purpose.

  He crawled back into his miserable bed. Now he was alone with the monster.

  Chapter 2: Burned Woods

  September 20

  I’m Rachel Lyons, early retiree from the public library world, newly anointed private investigator, in business with my husband Matthew Lyons for three years now. I was out for a stroll in the woods with a conservation group I’d just joined. Only, the stroll was more like a trudge. The group I was trudging with was in search of signs of life after the firestorms that had burned a tenth of Southern California last week.

  I was in search of female companionship.

  The wonderful thing about working in a public library is working with a highly intelligent group of mostly women. The thing about working out of your own home is it’s mostly you and your partner, and occasionally a couple of apprentices. And your computers.

  A sickly breeze coaxed my attention to the grim surrounds and the task at hand. The conversation among the Conservators was typical, I suppose. Discussions of what native grasses and plants to restore, amsonia and coyote melon and cucurbita palmate. I
had no real knowledge here so I just nodded agreement at the suggestions as to what to replant and what not.

  Another slight breeze stirred the lurking foulness into the smoke-stained air and I turned, suddenly electrified. I knew that smell. My recent training had made me very familiar with it. The group resumed its discussion without me as I found myself following what was surely the scent of death—human death--just a few steps away and down behind a family of boulders on a gentle slope.

  “Rachel! Where are you going? We shouldn’t wander off alone…” someone called out after me. Probably President Elise.

  Wherever life takes me, I thought stubbornly.

  I climbed down and stopped in my tracks. On the ground about twenty feet away was a black mound, the obvious source of the stench. The calling voices behind me faded away as my mind began to shut down to a pinpoint of perception. I touched one hand to the nearest boulder for anchorage, grappling with the idea that the dark mound had once been human. Maybe I was holding the rock so I wouldn’t sway. On its side with legs curling away and head down in a classic fetal position the shape made a hideous silhouette in 3-D.

  A week was a long time for a body to lie about—which was how long it had been since the Santa Ana wind driven fires had flown through here and burned these mountain woods.

  From the elevation of its uppermost limbs I knew it had passed through the seventy-two hour stage of rigor mortis, into the swollen stage of internal decay and self-digestion. Thus the lovely smell.

  The others had caught up to me. “Treat this like a crime scene folks.”

  They stopped, respectful of the authority in my voice. Rachel Lyons was no longer just a happy hiker. I was now the private investigator from Lyons Investigations and Research, Inc., or LIRI, and we were already well known and respected in these parts.

  The sun was shifting lower in the sky. Soon its light would paint an orange stain on everything and the photographs wouldn’t show true colors. I had to hurry.

  “Can I assist you, Rachel, in preserving the site?” I jumped at the sound of a voice inches from my head. The lone African American in our conservation group, a woman in her thirties or early forties, had joined me.

  “I’m Dr. Karen Bridle,” she said, and offered her hand. I have a PhD in zoology. Perhaps I can be of assistance. I work regularly with the local ME and am schooled in protecting evidence.” In the weeks to come I would learn she knew a great deal about the local ME and his offices.

  Chapter 3: Chocolate Words

  Violent sounds of gunfire woke me with a start.

  Peering blurrily at the giant television screen in our living room, I watched two more bad guys get killed until my heart settled down. Matt was still asleep. He could sleep through anything. Most guys could. Once again another great rental movie had put us under. Once again our new reclining chairs had lulled us to sleep. A purchase we were both regretting.

  Togetherness in your middle years.

  About my name, Rachel Lyons, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s poetic. Rachel means lamb in some language, probably Hebrew, definitely biblical, which makes my married name rather strange. I actually stopped to think about the implications of being lamb lion before marrying the macho Marine pilot now snoring a few feet away. Something about the lamb lying down with the lion kept running through my mind.

  Maybe because he was a babe.

  But I did, obviously, and for the next thirty years, I crisscrossed the United States chasing duty stations, while raising three boys and working my library career in broken segments--as he came and went to Vietnam, to the Med (sea, that is), and to Iraq One. And then we settled down in Jacksonville, got the kids through high school and off to college, and even saw them married off.

  Somewhere in the middle, Matt retired and eventually so did I. And then we made three big switches; from east to west coast, from government employees to entrepreneurs, and from country living to suburban dwellers in the midst of a cultural chaos.

  Luckily, we already owned a small home in Escondido that we’d purchased on one of our many tours here, and that was where I was sitting right now.

  Well actually, in the reclining chair still. They’re hard to get out of. I persevered and then headed back to the kitchen to finish the after-dinner clean up.

  Matt and I had a deal. He cooked and I cleaned. It was a great deal for me, I hated cooking. Something about my last customers and their constant complaints about beef stroganoff being a secret Russian recipe for poison and shrimp being bottom feeding insects of the sea had long ago burned out my culinary gene.

  Located in the foothills below Cleveland County, our eighties-era home is on an acre of land just north of the wild animal park of the San Diego Zoo. If you listen hard while standing on one of our decks, you can hear the tigers yawning. Especially at dawn, before the traffic.

  The cultural chaos part I mostly love. It’s very exciting to live in a state that is constantly remaking itself. The Spanish language part is a little daunting, however.

  On my way to the kitchen I passed the new ladder-shaped quilt rack I’d just assembled and draped with four of my latest hand sewn quilts. Each quilt took me about a year to complete and most of that time was spent doing the top stitching--which is why I was trying to find a quilting club to join. Top stitching, despite its name, is the stitching together of the layers of the quilt (usually three; top, bottom and stuffing.) So I was looking for a group of hand quilters, one that did old fashioned sewing bees.

  I’d read online that a group of women could complete the top stitching of a full sized quilt in a day. So if I found a quilting bee I could spend more time doing my favorite part, the more creative patchwork, or piecing, of the top sheet.

  There used to be hand quilting groups in California, but try as I might I couldn’t find one now. Not even with the aid of the internet. Modern women, especially modern Californians, didn’t have time to quilt by hand. They were busy raising kids, keeping house and working full time.

  Maybe there weren’t any hand quilting groups anymore. Or, maybe the ones that existed were very private and didn’t advertise themselves. But I was still looking.

  I began cleaning up, asking myself again why the local authorities in Cleveland County had not requested my records of the discovery at Applepine Ridge. I’d submitted our preliminary report nearly a week ago. Surely there was an inquiry underway concerning the cause of the old man’s death. It was true that most of our investigative work took place in San Diego County, a little in Temecula, even one case in Orange County two years ago. But we regularly worked with folks in Cleveland County as well, and I was puzzled why no one was contacting me.

  It nagged at me--who was the guy? How did he die? So I’d asked Matt this morning to learn what he could. The event was staying with me longer than I wanted. It had taken three days just to get the smell of death out of my nostrils. I needed finality.

  You might ask, what had gotten us started in the private investigating business? The answer would be that Matt had had a brush with the law and he liked the feel of it. Back somewhere in the middle of his long career in the Marines, Matt had done a stint as a legal officer. Which meant he’d been involved in preparing cases for the military court system and did some investigating, even flying to other countries to investigate helicopter accidents. He loved the investigative stuff. My training as a researcher was a natural fit for our new small business.

  The idea was off-putting when he first raised it; I just couldn’t see myself skulking around, sneaking in and out of people’s lives. Until he explained that what investigators often do involves researching people, researching their work and their secrets. A slightly different slant.

  But his words awakened in me a side of me that had gone dormant after so many years of public library and school library work. I actually was a bit sneaky. I could really be a big snoop. Frankly loved to break the rules. And the sheer adventure of it caught my imagination as it had Matt’s. Taking the various courses in San
Diego had cinched it for me. I especially fell in love with the forensics side of private investigation.

  Turning to wipe down the stove on the small island behind me, I caught my reflection in the glass of the microwave. My blond hair had only a little gray in it, which barely showed. And the wrinkles were still few and far between. Not too bad for a middle-aged gal.

  A sharp ringing intruded on my kitchen-cleaning reverie, and I grabbed the phone and stepped out onto the porch to get away from the television blare of the movie. The night was still warm in late September and it greeted me with a friendly embrace. The air was finally clean enough to breathe comfortably again after the recent terrible fires. I answered on the third ring.

  It’s a rare thing if you can stand anywhere in California and not hear the sound of traffic, but on our sequestered decks in the evening we heard only birds and breezes through the eucalyptus trees and an occasional neighbor. And a lowing wildebeest looking for her herd in the darkness.

  As I usually do around dinner time, I pre-screened calls for annoying telemarketers. I didn’t speak. I stood silently waiting for a human voice instead of a machine hum and click. The children know I do this. My good friends know I do this. All others are selling or begging or politicking and they don’t belong on my phone.

  “Is this Rachel Lyons?” a chocolate voice finally asked in answer to my subconscious hello.

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “I’m Hannah Lilly. You don’t know me however it’s come to our attention that you’re looking for a group of hand-quilters to join. We--that is, my quilting group and I--would like to invite you to our next bee.”

  Her voice was soothing and strangely familiar. But the thrill of excitement quickly morphed into mild anxiety as I wondered how anyone would have known. I couldn’t think of any case when I’d spoken of this idea. Perhaps I’d let it slip at the Cleveland Conservators.