Murder on a Starry Night: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery Read Online Free

single families living in mansions were pretty much over, and although she’d love for the house to be preserved, she wasn’t sure what the best choice would be. Perhaps a small museum to house local art? Something that wouldn’t cause traffic jams, something tasteful and discrete.
    “And do you think I care about being liked by the neighbors, Po?” Adele asked.
    “Yes,” Po said simply. And in that moment, Po believed her own words. There was something forced about Adele’s attitude. Po remembered Adele as a young woman, home from her first year at Smith. She had come over one day with her mother, shortly after newlyweds Po and Sam had moved into the home she still lived in. Po remembered with some clarity because Adele was excited about the things she was learning and the thrill of living near Boston and soaking up all it had to offer. Po wasn’t that far removed from her own experience at Radcliffe, and they had shared stories about football games and clubs and what once were the Seven Sister schools.
    Adele had seemed older than her years even then, but her enthusiasm for life and learning had impressed Po. The austere façade she had adopted in her early fifties didn’t seem a totally comfortable fit, and Po wondered if this was the real Adele they were seeing or if grief and loss had hardened her.
    “Po’s right, Adele,” Selma said. “Everyone is welcome here, but we’ve projects to finish. Is there something in particular we can help you with?”
    “Of course there is. I don’t make a habit of wasting my Saturday mornings in the backrooms of small shops.” She paused and looked around the table, taking in each of the women and the fabric in front of them. Nearly finished table runners and small colorful quilts ready to hang on walls crowded the table.
    The Queen Bees were all watching Adele, their fingers the only movement in the room.
    Adele placed the palms of her hands on the table as if addressing a jury. “I’m here on business. I want you to make eight quilts for me.”
    Eight sets of fingers ceased movement, as if hit by a bolt of lightning.
    “Immediately,” Adele added.
    “What?” Selma said.
    “You heard me, Selma Parker. I want you to make eight quilts for me,” Adele repeated. “I will pay you plenty— you can donate it to that quilt museum I hear you want to start, or whatever.” Her long thin fingers waved the air. “I will even donate extra to the cause. I want fine pieced quilt tops—I have already made arrangements to have them quilted as soon as you are finished piecing them. And I want you to begin working on them now.”
    “Why in heaven’s name do you want eight quilts?”
    “I want twelve quilts. But my mother preserved some of her own, and I will use four of those.”
    “For what?” Kate asked.
    “For the bed and breakfast I will be opening in my family home.”

CHAPTER 3
    The news that Adele Harrington was turning the Harrington mansion into a B&B hit Crestwood with the force of a Kansas tornado.
    The issue wasn’t that the bed and breakfast idea was foreign to residents — Crestwood was the perfect atmosphere for a cozy B&B, and the town already boasted two small inns near the Emerald River. Parents of Canterbury students kept them full and profitable. It was that the Harrington property was probably the most valuable private home in the entire town—and folks had an eye on it for far more lofty enterprises than a place for visitors to spend the night and wake up to omelets and home-made cinnamon rolls.
    A special meeting was called to protest the conversion of the mansion into a business, and Po felt the venom in her neighbor’s speech.
    “There’ll be traffic messes, ungodly noise—and they’ll probably start having weddings and God knows what over there,” Keith Harris had bellowed. But listening quietly in the corner of the Harris’s living room, Po knew it was more than that. It was the change in the quiet, tree-canopied neighborhoods that