Chapter 34

Bellingham, Washington

Saturday, March 7, 2020

The four of us, three humans and one canine, arrived at Hank and Ellen Mitchell’s house at 6:30 on the dot, having used our

cell phone flashlights to illuminate the path up our steep driveway, along the shoulder of Bayside, and down the Mitchells’

driveway. In the old days, I probably would have driven, but I’m more of a walker now.

Hank met us at the door. “Come in,” he said heartily. “Ellen’s attending to some last-minute details. Let me take your coats

and Sarah’s leash. Then I’ll give you the nickel tour.”

The place was illuminated as if in anticipation of a real estate open house. Every lamp was lit, including the massive chandelier

hanging over a beautifully set live-edge dining room table.

Mel’s and my furniture tends to be on the sleek side with leather-covered furniture and glass-topped tables. Clearly the Mitchells preferred a more homey look. In the living room space, upholstered chairs, a gigantic sofa, and antique wooden side tables were arranged around a massive river-rock fireplace. Sarah, not particularly interested in the decor, made straight for the Oriental rug in front of the blazing fire and settled down on that as if she owned the place.

Hank motioned to an empty spot to one side of the roaring fire. “That’s where my drum set usually sits,” he explained to Mel,

“but today Kyle and I decided to leave it at your place. I hope you don’t mind. We played with his band all afternoon. My

arms are worn out, but I haven’t had that much fun in years.”

“What band?” I asked, puzzling over the idea that Kyle had already connected with a bunch of like-minded kids here in Bellingham.

“The Rockets,” Kyle said, rolling his eyes. “From down in Ashland. Ricky’s dad runs sound tech for the Shakespeare Festival.

He signed up to be a beta tester on a new app that allows people to practice together online even though they’re miles apart.

It was great, and Hank’s terrific!”

“A little out of practice,” Hank admitted, “but for an old guy, I think I did okay.”

Kyle grinned. “You did just fine,” he agreed.

Looking around the house, it was apparent that once upon a time this part of it had been divided into three smaller rooms—dining

room, living room, and kitchen. Open-concept living hadn’t been a gleam in most interior designers’ eyes back in the forties

and fifties. Now, all intervening walls had been demolished, leaving behind an enormous living space that contained an upscale

kitchen at the far end, a dining area in the middle, and a cozy seating area in front of the massive fireplace at the other

end. Taken altogether, it was stunning.

Not wanting to disturb Ellen who was bustling around in the kitchen, Hank led us in the opposite direction. Great care had been taken in bringing an old house with a midcentury modern footprint into a new era. As built, the house had contained four bedrooms and two baths. Now it had been pared down to only two bedrooms. One had been carved up to create three separate rooms—a powder room, a laundry room, and an immense walk-in closet that was now part of the master suite. In the master the original en suite and closet had been combined into a spalike bath. Of the two remaining bedrooms, one had been updated into a deluxe guest room complete with its own bath, while the last had morphed into Ellen’s quilting studio.

When Hank had mentioned Ellen did quilting, I had envisioned something simple like the handmade quilt that had topped my single

bed while I was growing up. It had consisted of alternating red and white squares inside a deep blue border. The quilt had

been a gift from one of my mother’s friends, and Mom called it my “Fourth of July quilt.” Personally I had hated it, and it

was one of the first items I ditched once I was on my own.

With that history in mind, when we walked into Ellen’s quilting studio, I was amazed. The sewing machine alone was a sleek

technical wonder that put my mother’s old foot-pedal-propelled Singer to shame. The quilt that was currently in process wasn’t

made up of alternating squares. Instead, it was art, pure and simple. Alternating strips of pink, lavender, and yellow created

a surprisingly realistic image of a tulip field, complete with a half-completed bright red barn currently in process in the

foreground.

“This is gorgeous!” Mel exclaimed.

“It’s actually a commission,” Hank said proudly. “They’re planning to raffle it off as a fundraiser during this year’s Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, which is coming up later in the spring. That means she’s working on a bit of a deadline.”

“How long has Ellen been quilting?” Mel asked.

“Long before the two of us met,” Hank informed us. “When I asked her to marry me, that was her only condition—that she have

a room of her own that was strictly for quilting. After a tough day at the call center, she says there’s nothing like coming

in here and working on a quilt for a quiet hour or so to unload the stress.”

“Maybe I should consider taking up quilting,” Mel said. After a short pause, she added with a laugh, “Then again, probably

not. I’m not exactly the sewing type.”

Considering the day she’d had, I didn’t doubt she was stressed, but Mel didn’t say a word about George Pritchard’s arrest,

and neither did I.

“That was me, too,” Ellen supplied, appearing in the doorway behind us. “No interest in sewing whatsoever although my mother

was a quilter for as long as I can remember. When Mom died, I inherited all her equipment. I meant to get rid of it, but somehow

I couldn’t bring myself to throw it all away.

“Thanks to Hank I now have equipment my mother never could have dreamed of. That top-of-the-line sewing machine is what makes

it possible for me to create something as complex as this tulip field. My only regret is that I didn’t take quilting up sooner

while Mom was still alive. She would have loved doing it together.”

“You’re doing it now, and this one is amazing!” Mel declared. “Where do I buy raffle tickets and how much are they?”

“Ten bucks apiece,” Ellen answered.

“Sign me up for twenty, then,” Mel said. “Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

“If you’d like, I can drop the tickets by your office next week, but in the meantime, soup’s on, and I do mean soup.”

With that, we all trooped back to the dining room table. Like the quilt, Ellen’s oxtail soup was a work of art. And being

able to dip still-warm, homemade, buttered bread into that savory broth was heavenly. When Ellen asked if anyone wanted seconds,

Kyle immediately raised his hand.

Dessert was a crème br?lée with a crust of burned sugar across the top. While we were enjoying that, the conversation somehow

drifted back to quilting.

“You’d be surprised how many quilters are out there,” Ellen said. “Two more girls from the What-Comm call center are taking

it up, and when I worked at the call center down in Seattle, there were several there, too.”

“Really,” I said. “When I hear someone saying, ‘911. What is the nature of your emergency?,’ I don’t envision someone whose

spare time would be devoted to making quilts.”

Ellen laughed. “They do. In fact, one of the dispatchers in Seattle, Constance Herzog, is a nationally acclaimed quilter.

She’s won prizes all over the country. And she’s been recognized for donating her work to domestic violence shelters so that

when the women there move on to permanent housing, they’ll have something tangible to take with them.”

“Very commendable,” Mel said. “Most of the time they come to shelters with nothing but the clothes on their backs.”

“As far as Connie goes, I suspect there might be a bit of personal history involved,” Ellen continued. “When she finished remodeling her studio, she held an open house, so several girls from the call center went. There was a framed picture hanging on one wall that looked like a mug shot, which was weird, so one of the girls asked about it. Connie said it was her dad and explained that was the only picture she had of him since her mother burned all the others.”

“A mug shot?” Mel repeated. “Really? So did her father end up going to prison?”

“Nope,” Ellen replied. “Whatever he was accused of doing, Connie said he got off.”

By now I was all ears. Was this what we were looking for? Someone with a law enforcement connection, a personal interest in

domestic violence issues, and possibly some personal experience with domestic violence? The burning of an ex’s photos made

that sound like a distinct possibility. And saying “he got off” was a far cry from saying “he didn’t do it.” The killer we

were looking for seemed to target domestic violence perpetrators who had indeed gotten off. As far as I was concerned, that

framed picture was unlikely to be a caring daughter’s tribute to a beloved father, not by a long shot.

“We all talked about how weird it was afterward, but we decided that what a person does in the privacy of her own home was

none of our business.”

None of your business, maybe , I thought, but it sure as hell sounds like mine!

What I was feeling right then was that sense of euphoria that comes over you when you’re working on a thousand-piece jigsaw

puzzle and two pieces with nothing on them but clear blue sky suddenly click together perfectly. In this instance, my two

separate puzzle pieces were Ron Wang’s suggestion that our killer might be some kind of vigilante and Sandy Sechrest’s revelation

about how working with domestic violence victims while serving as a 911 dispatcher had motivated her to become a police officer.

Maybe Constance Herzog had been pushed in the opposite direction.

At this point, she was still a 911 dispatcher who seemed to have a laserlike focus on domestic violence issues. So was it possible that this prizewinning Seattle quilter was also our serial killer?

There was nothing I wanted to do more right then than to race out of the house and get Todd Hatcher on the line, but you’re

not supposed to eat and run. So I minded my p’s and q’s and stayed put, all the while feeling as though I wanted to jump out

of my skin. Finally, though, it was time to leave. As we gathered coats and jackets, inspiration struck and I turned back

to Ellen.

“Is that other quilter’s work anything like yours?” I asked.

“I suppose,” Ellen said with a shrug. “She does landscapes, too.”

“And if I wanted to see some of her quilts, how would I go about it?”

“Google the name Constance Herzog. You should be able to see what she currently has available online.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that. Mel’s birthday is coming up. One of those might be just what the doctor ordered.”

We finished thanking them for the lovely meal and headed out. Their front door had barely closed, when Mel turned on me.

“What the hell?” she demanded. “When have I ever mentioned wanting to own a quilt? Yes, I offered to buy raffle tickets, but

I was only being polite.”

Kyle and Sarah had gone on ahead. “I’ll tell you later,” I muttered under my breath, “but not right now.”