Ada Unraveled

By Barbara Sullivan

A riveting mystery wrapped in a disturbing family, Ada Unraveled is the first of the Quilted Mystery novels. Central to the story is the Stowall family, headed by a simple father obsessed with the fear that his branch of a mountain clan would bring dishonor to them all.
But first we are introduced to an enigmatic being with the words, “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? He couldn’t have guests. He was in a prison, a cage....”
Rachel and her Marine husband Matt had arrive on the west coast after early retirement from their respective careers. They establish a private investigations business and ply their trade successfully. Growing restless in the mostly male, home-based business, Rachel searches for female friends through her hobbies, one of them being hand quilting. So she shouldn’t have been surprised when a chocolate voiced woman phoned to woo her into attending an all-night quilting party the following week. But she was. She’d barely told anyone about her yearning to locate an old fashioned bee.
As she arrives in the small town of Iguana, high on Cleveland Mountain, the skies open and let loose a torrent of rain. Rachel races to the front door of a broken house that looks as if it were built one room at a time over a period of years. She is led down a twisted hall, turning this way and that, to a back bedroom for the bee.
The night of endless stitches and shared childhood secrets grows stranger as the hours tick by and Rachel becomes more suspicious of the young and old women she’s joined. But the biggest surprise comes at the end when the group hires her to investigate the death of the one whose place she has taken. They say good-bye, giving her a magnificent quilt, a genealogy and a small leather diary. The name on the diary is “Ada Stowall.”
This sophisticated exploration of family secrets and violence isn’t just about solving a crime. It’s also about an evil obsession and how it destroys everything in its path.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Sullivan
• Release date: Apr 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996320818

Barbara Sullivan

Barbara Sullivan lives in Southern California with her husband and her fifth German shepherd. A retired librarian, she worked for twenty-five years before stepping away to begin her writing career. The author holds degrees in History and Library Science, and a Masters in Public Administration. Barbara is a hand quilter and you can view her quilts and more at www.quiltmyst.blogspot.com

Book preview

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.

We meet once a month on the first Saturday, she continued after a short pause. We take turns supplying a quilt to sew which usually works out to one every eight months. Absorbed, fascinated by the sound of her deep voice, I mostly listened. So there must be eight in the group?

Are you still there?

Yes, yes of course. I’m just surprised. How did you know...?

Hannah Lilly continued, not hearing my question, her voice changing subtly to something more reserved.

One catch though, our gatherings begin after six in the evening, always on a Saturday, and we sew until it’s done, so you should wear comfortable clothes for naps. And when it’s your turn to host, we sew your quilt and in return you supply us with snacks. You should understand that we will keep sewing until the quilt is done. Her lyrical voice halted momentarily. Probably all night.

Oh, really. What on earth was this? I wasn’t looking for a cult. What I mean is, yes. I mean, I realize that’s how quilting bees were sometimes done a long time ago. I don’t know if I expected that to be the case today, however…staying up all night… I was stammering like an idiot.

Again she interrupted. Well, so many women work now, it’s the best way we can do this. In fact two of our gals work on Saturdays. But also, this group has a history of sewing all night that goes back years. And, we don’t quilt in the summer, in fact we’ve just started up again…this month, in September.

Okay, this sounded really bizarre. I found myself wondering if I had the stamina to sew all night long. I was really an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of person. She continued to talk through my musings, offering up a little more information with each halting sentence.

Our group is made up of women of different ages, including a couple well into their eighth and ninth decades. We pace ourselves, sleep occasionally, and eat tons of sugar.

Eighth and ninth decades? Was she trying to make me feel silly about the all-nighter thing? But I began wondering how Matt would take this. Glancing back toward the kitchen and the sounds of the weather channel changing to the history channel, I thought he might not even notice I was gone. He probably thought I was already in bed, reading instead of risking being eaten by a stray pack of hyenas out on our side deck.

No, that would only be my worry. Wisdom had finally roused himself enough to come join me. Our old shepherd was on guard duty. I stroked the fur behind his ears as I listened.

You must have quite a time finding new members with the all night thing, I said.

Matt probably wouldn’t even miss me if I left for a night, would spend the night channel surfing in his sleep, I mused. Good grief. Was I talking myself into this idiocy?

The voice on the other end of the phone sighed, and said, You have no idea how hard it is to find new members, Rachel. Actually it was while talking to someone else, attempting to convince her it was safe to venture out into the evening to spend the night with us--that I wasn’t a witch wanting to start a new coven—that I learned of your interest. The gal who runs your local quilting store there in Escondido, the Collage Cottage I think she calls it, she told me about your interest in a hand quilting group.

Really? I’d mentioned my interest to her?

Karen. You mean Karen Harper.

But I found myself smiling. The Hannah woman sounded real enough. Not a whole lot more delusional than the rest of us. And if the Collage Cottage gave my phone out they must have felt it was safe.

Can you send me some information…by email? Perhaps point me to your web page, or blog or whatever?

Oh great! I know this is coming at you out of left field, and that you don’t know anything about us, but I assure you we are a safe bunch. The group has been meeting for forever this way and…we just had a vacancy open. By death, actually. She went from hesitant to full-on stop and sighed again. Wishing she could bite off her tongue, I guessed.

But with quilters in their seventies and eighties, I wasn’t concerned about her news that one of the members had died.

I heard Matt calling. So what came out next was, Listen, I have to go, Hannah, so where can I read about you?

Actually, we’re registered with the American Society of Quilters, ASQ--not to be confused with the American Quilters’ Society. There’s a brief description of us online at their site and you can contact them with other questions you may have as well. They’ll vouch for us.

Hannah Lilly paused, her hand apparently over the mouth of the phone, then resumed in a tighter voice, I’m afraid that shout you just heard was my daughter picking a fight with one of her little brothers and I need to say goodbye now. She was a mother. Our group is named Quilted Secrets. You should receive a letter in a day or two giving you more details…Deborah quit teasing Sam!"

She was a normal mother. She gave me the group’s web address and her personal email, and I gave her my email and told her I would email my address. And then she was gone. The complete silence that followed her call made me question whether the conversation had ever really happened. But Matt’s questing voice had retreated to the back of our house toward our office and bedroom, so I broke off that line of thinking.

A lion roared in the distance. A Lyon was roaring in my house.

A hand quilting group. Wow. An actual old fashioned bee. I was filled with excitement as I walked back inside to reassure Matt that I hadn’t really just been time-traveling, as I felt I’d been.

Chapter 4: Quilted Secrets

One week later, I was wending my way toward my first authentic quilting bee under a darkish sky. Totally energized. A little anxious. But smiling all the way. Matt had been surprised at first, maybe even concerned, but as we’d sat together in our office reading the online information on The Quilted Secrets Bee: A Small Hive of Old Fashioned Hand Quilters webpage, he’d slowly warmed to the idea. On some level Matt knew I needed this camaraderie with other women, and for me socializing had always been easier when combined with an activity--something to help fill the void when conversations lagged.

The web site also gave me two names to work with. I already had Hannah Lilly, and her chocolaty voice. Apparently Hannah was their public contact person. The other name was Victoria Stowall and she was the leader of the group—perhaps its originator. But aside from the background photograph of a beautiful block quilt, there were no photographs.

I looked up at the sky ahead of me at the low flying gray and charcoal clouds that covered our bit of California like a lumpy army blanket--damp and stinky. The weather was so unusual for this time of year. Rain was a rarity anytime in Southern California—the average rainfall being somewhere around twelve inches--but it was especially rare in the fall. Tonight the clouds were supposed to evolve into a drenching storm, an event that could turn the recent fear of fires into fear of mudslides. My winding hour-long drive would take me through Julian to I-13, and then on south into Cleveland County.

Dusk was just settling in under the thick blanket of clouds as I found my next turn. I passed the ashes of several burned out neighborhoods, small groups of what were once homes but now were reduced to lone chimneys sticking up here and there like giant grave markers. They reminded me of the burned tree spires at Applepine where we’d stumbled upon a corpse.

I bore right onto I-13 and quickly found the turnoff to Iguana. I spotted the next sign, a local product far less welcoming than the one on the freeway. This one needed a coat of paint, and was a warning not a welcome.

IGUANA:

Population small and meant to stay that way.

Lovely. But not an unusual sentiment for over-crowded Southern California.

I passed through a hamlet of meager stores and starving restaurants, a gas station so old I wondered if it was up to code with today’s green laws. And finally a small wooden church, which made me pray I would beat the rain to the front door of this event. It was going to be a close race. I kept searching for the elusive dirt road I’d been instructed to find a little past the old town—something about a low rock wall entrance with the name in Mexican tiles on it: Stowall.

Finally, there it was. I gratefully pulled to a stop just inside the long driveway. I needed a moment to compose my slightly panicky brain. I gazed at the house before me, now feeling completely time-warped back to the thirties and teleported to the Appalachians—sans the green woods.

Ahead of me lay a sprawling one-story wood frame structure, fully lit from one end to the other (obviously no fear of electric bills here) with spotlighting on a few crippled looking shrubs that hugged the oddly shaped perimeter. A strange landscaping choice that was immediately compounded by a large

Reviews for Ada Unraveled

[barbarasullivan-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Private Investigator Rachel Lyons...involvement with the close-knit quilters quickly becomes a dark and dangerous investigation. I give it 5 stars.

[anglersrest_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was delighted when I spotted via Amazon just before Christmas. I had high hopes for the book and I wasn't disappointed. In fact I was only about a third of the way through the book when I checked if there was another in the series, which there was!The series, opens with the introduction of the narrator Rachel, who with her husband Matt run a private investigator business. Rachel has a background in libraries and is a quilter looking for a regular American style quilting bee. Matt is an former military man. They are pretty much the business, although they do have a small team of employee who help them complete the various contracts.Having looked for a quilting bee without success, the participants in one contact Rachel and invite her to join. Rachel does and is somewhat bewildered with the other members. Each one seems to have a story to tell and one to hide. By the end of the first evening, a member of the group ask Rachel if they can employer her to do some investigations. Rachel, agrees and leaves the quilting be clutching a diary,quilt, a family tree and lots and lots of questions....The story that unfolds is not complex, but it is a story with lots of strands, much like the strands holding a quilt together. The strands come together, which culminates with Rachel being threatened. Her investigations are getting close to the truth......and generations of secrets are about to be told.I loved this book. It has everything that I love, characters that felt like they were having a conversation with me, a good storyline and a complex genealogy.I am currently reading the second book in the series and I hope there is more in the series to come.