Read Murders on Elderberry Road: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery for Free Online Page B

church events — and the garden club and charity balls — Mary shined at those.”
    Po looked over and watched the circle of guests moving around Mary Hill. It was that sad, peculiar dance people did at wakes, and Po felt a sudden surge of empathy for the woman in the middle of it all.
    Mary Hill looked up and saw Po watching her. Before Po could avert her eyes, Mary smiled at her. Then she excused herself from the group standing around her and walked across the patio to where the Queen Bees gathered.
    “It was good of you all to come,” Mary said, looking at each of them in turn. “The Queen Bees. But where’s Selma?”
    Just then Selma Parker walked over from the other direction. “Present and accounted for,” she said, joining the group.
    “I’m so glad you’re here,” Mary said
    Selma frowned. “Well, now, where else would I be?”
    Mary Hill slipped her arm through Selma’s and drew her close to her side. The contrast between the two women — the tall, dark, elegant widow, and the round, flush-cheeked quilter with her thinning red hair slightly askew — would have been comical in any other setting.
    “Will you be all right?” Mary asked Selma.
    Selma straightened up in her unfamiliar heels. She looked intently at Mary. “Of course I’ll be all right. Why wouldn’t I be? I am not the one in need of concern.”
    “But it was your store —”
    Po felt Selma tense.
    “My store will be fine, Mary. I’ll be fine, too.” Selma seemed uncomfortable with Mary’s arm in hers, but she didn’t move away. “This whole damn thing is awful, but the only real sorrow is your pain, Mary. That’s how I see it. That’s all.”
    Mary smiled gratefully. “And the others?”
    For a minute Po thought Mary meant them, the Queen Bees, but when she followed the nod of Mary’s head, she saw that she was looking at a small group of men and women standing near the wine bar on the edge of the patio. August Schuette from the bookstore stood with his back to them talking intently with Ambrose Sweet, co-owner with Jesse Farley of the Elderberry Road Brew and Brie. Daisy Sample and Max Elliott, the lawyer for the ESOC, were listening to the exchange.
    Selma looked at them, then back at Mary. “We may have our disagreements — the whole silly bunch of us — but when push comes to shove, we’ll never let one another down. Good grief, you know that, Mary. And Owen knew that, too. Sure, he made me mad sometimes, and others, too. But that means nothing. They’ll all be here for you. And for me, for any of us. No matter what.”
    Po watched Mary’s long fingers pinch and release the fabric of her black jacket.
    “Thank you, Selma,” Mary said finally. She smiled politely at the others in the group, then excused herself, and walked across the patio toward a new group of mourners waiting for her near the potted ferns. Kate noticed that she skirted the huddled storeowners and moved instead to a collection of university professors who stood near the patio steps.
    “Now what was that all about?” Phoebe asked, straining her neck to see where Mary was going.
    “Much ado about nothing,” Selma said. “Owen was a director of the corporation that we formed when we bought the land on Elderberry Road. There were some disagreements recently, but they all pale in the light of Mary’s loss. This isn’t the place nor the time to talk about such things.”
    “Well, if looks could kill, we’d have another dead body, right here on this patio,” Phoebe said. She nodded toward the group of shop owners.
    August and Daisy were staring at Mary as she walked across the patio. Gus’s glasses had slipped to the bulge near the end of his short fat nose and his thick brows were knit together in fierce concentration.
    Selma shrugged. “Gus Schuette is a teddy bear with an awful face, that’s all. I can’t imagine what the good Lord had in mind in piecing that face together the way He did, but it’s no fault of Gus’s. Don’t pay any