“Back in the forties?”
“I guess so, yes.”
“Did she ever refer to them as the Faraway Quilters?”
“I don’t think so, Simon. They were just the Quilters, like our group.”
“What was this California group?” I asked him.
“They were very secret, somehow connected with the motion-picture industry. There was a man—” Suddenly he said, “Come, my friend. We must interview the true Miss Death. If anyone can shed light on the victim, she can.”
Shelly supplied us with Miss Death’s phone number and she was awaiting our arrival. She had a modest garden apartment in town and she opened the door as Simon and I left the car. Veronica Brand was indeed something of a kook, as the police officer had said. Though she appeared close to fifty, she had flaming red hair and wore a long black dressing gown that covered her slender figure. When she reached out to shake our hands I caught sight of a massive tattoo that seemed to run up her right arm. “Found the place okay, huh?”
“We’re here,” I agreed, stating the obvious.
“The cops already questioned me. Damn kid borrowed my car and then wrecked it!”
“How long had you known the victim?” Simon asked as she showed us into her apartment. The living room was decorated with a massive mural of a crouching dragon, breathing fire.
“Didn’t know her at all! She showed up on Monday and offered me a thousand dollars cash if I’d let her take my place as Miss Death. Hell, that was more money than I could turn down. I showed her the costume and ran though my spiel with her.”
“And sent this unknown person into a stranger’s house?”
“She was only a kid. It’s not as if she were Jack the Ripper, for God’s sake!”
“What was her explanation for this stunt?” I asked.
“She wanted to surprise an old friend of her grandmother’s.”
“But how did she know my wife had hired you in the first place?”
“She’d telephoned one of the women last week from the West Coast, found her address on the Internet. The woman mentioned the meeting last night, and that they were having me as a speaker. So Mandy hopped a plane and came to me with her offer.”
“Did she leave any possessions here at your place?”
“No, she had a hotel room in White Plains for a couple of nights. What she didn’t have was a car, so she borrowed my SUV. I was a fool to let her.”
“The police think someone at the party may have drugged her so she went off the road on the way down.”
“Are you serious? She was only a kid.”
“She had a bit of a confrontation with one of my wife’s guests, an old film star named Grace Merrit. Name mean anything to you?”
Veronica Brand shook her head. “Never watch old movies. Tough enough keeping up with the new ones.”
Simon spoke up then. “Did Miss Snider happen to mention a California group that was also called the Quilters, or the Faraway Quilters?”
“No. She told me nothing, but I liked the color of her money.”
As we were leaving I said, “Sorry about your car.”
“So am I.”
Back in my car, I asked Simon, “Where to now?”
“Do you have a copy of Shelly’s list of the Quilters members?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s pay a visit to Grace Merrit.”
The former movie star’s home was hardly palatial but it was several steps up from Veronica Brand’s place. Located in Larchmont, the next town over from ours, it was one step farther along on the commuter line from Manhattan. A car was parked in her driveway so we weren’t surprised to find another of the Quilters, Mona Emberry, inside with her. I remembered they’d come together the previous night.
Mona towered over the more petite Grace, and she immediately informed us that the police had just been there. “They’re questioning all the Quilters. They think one of us slipped something into her beer.”
“Did you?” Simon asked.
It was Grace Merrit who answered, conducting us into her living room. “Of course not! That girl was a bit flaky. She might have been on something before she arrived at Shelly’s.”
I seated myself gingerly on her brocaded sofa and said, “She couldn’t have been on chloral hydrate or she’d have been unconscious. Someone had to slip it into her drink at the Quilters.”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” Mona said, “or Grace, either! At our ages we don’t go around feeding knockout drops to people, whatever the police might think.”
“The dead woman tried to ask you about Hollywood, about a group called the Faraway Quilters that her grandmother belonged to. I believe you were its president for a time, Miss Merrit.”
She tried to stare Simon down without answering, but finally relented. “Most of us served as president at one time or another.”
“There were twelve members, as with the present Quilters?”
“Correct.”
“Was there something special about that number?”
“We played bridge. That made up three tables.”
“Sixteen would have made four tables,” he pointed out. “I have wondered about the Faraway Quilters for years, ever since I learned of their existence. Isn’t it true that there was a thirteenth member, a male?”
“Certainly not!” Mona Emberry insisted.
Simon turned his attention back to her. “Were you a member of the California Quilters, too?”
“I was,” she admitted. “And we weren’t a Communist front!”
“Who else among the present membership was a member then?”
“Only one,” Grace answered. “Kate Brady, our youngest. She was still a teenager when the old Quilters disbanded.”
“Why would a Hollywood teenager spend her free nights playing bridge?” he wondered. “Were all of you in the motion-picture business?”
“That’s right,” Grace acknowledged. “I suppose I was the most successful, but we’d all had parts.”
Simon Ark studied the two women. “Your present interest in mysticism and spiritualism leads me to believe that the original Quilters must have had similar interests.”
“Not at all!” Grace insisted. “We were strictly social.”
“There were twelve women and one man. What was his purpose? What did he contribute?”
“There was no man.”
“I believe his name was Dr. Fritz Faraway,” Simon insisted. “He was a practitioner of alternative medicine who’d lost his license as a regular doctor.”
“What do you—?”
“Twelve women suggest to me a coven of witches, with a male wizard as its leader.”
Both women laughed at the suggestion, perhaps a little too much. “Dr. Faraway spoke to us on a few occasions,” Grace admitted. “But he was no wizard and we were no witches. Sometimes I wish we had been.”
“What about this woman who killed herself, Mandy Snider’s grandmother?”
“Fran Clinger suffered from depression. She was older than the rest of us and she hadn’t been able to get work. She wanted something from us that we weren’t able to give her. Suicide was her only way out. It was a foolish, tragic ending to a wasted life.” Her voice seemed to waver as she spoke. “But this Mandy hadn’t even been born yet then. Why would it mean anything to her?”
“That’s all we can tell you,” Mona Emberry said suddenly, rising to her feet. “You’ve tired Grace. I’ll have to ask you to leave. I’ll see you to your car.”
We were hustled out the front door. “You certainly take good care of Grace,” I commented.
“This whole business is my fault,” she said, but then fell silent, glancing back at the house.
“The dead woman phoned you from California, didn’t she?” Simon quickly asked. “She asked you about Grace and the others, and you were the one who told her about the Quilters and Miss Death.”
“Yes. That was a terrible mistake.”