A Patchwork of Clues

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “What do you talk about?” Kate asked. She looked at the two small triangles she had stitched together and frowned at the misaligned point. Slowly, she began to pull the stitching out. As the least experienced quilter, Kate had chosen the easiest star center for her block. But points, Kate had learned, were difficult, no matter what.

  “We talk about everything,” Selma said. “Hiring security guards, repairing roofs, fixing rain gutters. Insurance.”

  “Did you vote for directors?” Eleanor asked. She was standing, leaning lightly on her hand-carved cane to convince her eighty-five-year-old body it could still move. Finally, she eased herself down into a chair near Kate.

  “Yes, although it was pretty much a matter of who would do it. It takes time and all of us are busy,” Selma said. “We elect three directors so we don’t all have to meet on every tiny detail. This year it was Owen, Daisy, and Ambrose. We’re meeting soon to select someone to take Owen’s place.”

  “Would you be a candidate, Selma?” Po asked.

  “Not on your sweet life.. You’ve been around long enough to know all these folks on the block. Decisions don’t come by us easily and the less involved I have to be, the better. I have my hands full keeping up this shop. Besides, I detest those meetings. The group meets far more than I can stomach, and if you’re a director, you meet even more often.”

  “But surely you have a say in what decisions are made regarding the shops, don’t you?” The thought of Ambrose Sweet and some of the others making decisions that affected Selma’s store bothered Po.

  “Selma should have the biggest say.” Susan spoke up before Selma could answer. “We have the most frontage, and when they decide about snow removal and sidewalk repair and window awnings, well, it affects us financially more than some of the others.”

  Po noticed Susan’s use of “we” and she smiled to herself. That was good. Selma needed someone else who cared as much about the store as she did. Someone to carry that burden of care and attention.

  “Why should you have to pay more?” Kate asked.

  “Well, it’s the way it works. Each of the owners pays a certain amount into the CAM fund—that’s legal gibberish for common area maintenance. The amount we pay is based on footage, and with all my storage space and having both front and side windows, well, we have a lot of square footage and a lot of frontage…”

  A jingle from the front room broke off her sentence. From their spot at the table, Susan and Selma could see into the shop and could hear the bell above the door when new customers came in. Susan stood up and motioned to Selma that she’d help the customer.

  “So when you put in these skylights”—Phoebe pointed up to the long narrow windows in the ceiling—“who paid for that? Did it come out of the CAM funds?” she asked.

  “Not those. I put those skylights in a long time ago, when Po came to me and said that we needed to start a quilting circle. And it needed to be held in this very room, and if I didn’t add some natural light, we’d all be blind as bats in short order.”

  Po laughed and Selma continued. “That was long before the Elderberry shop owners got together and decided to buy this block of shops and run it the right way.

  “So no, the CAM funds didn’t pay for those windows. I did. But things are afoot now that might be beyond my control. Ambrose and Jesse, for example, want to put in a brick sidewalk. Mary Hill wants it too, and was pressuring Owen to see that it happened. He was going along with it—I could have killed him for that. That kind of thing will affect me greatly. In fact, it may be the last straw…” Selma’s voice dropped off as if she had driven off the side of a cliff. She paused for a minute, took a deep breath to collect herself, then looked intently at the small pieces of fabric on the table in front of her. “Fiddlesticks! See what I’ve done? I’ve pinned the wrong pieces together. My star will look more like a Drunkard’s Path.”

  Po sensed Selma’s distress. She walked over to the handsome oak sideboard that stood beneath the back window. Selma had found it at a flea market and refinished it. It was usually filled with stacks of fabric, and jars of scissors, transparent rulers, and rotary cutters, and the cupboard below was jammed full of additional supplies. But on Saturday mornings a space in the center was cleared for pots of hot coffee and platters of cinnamon rolls, coffeecake, or whatever Kate—who tended to bake when she was worried or stressed or bored—had pulled from her oven a short while earlier. Since she’d joined the group, Po swore their collective weight had risen one hundred percent. She lifted the foil off a paper plate and breathed in the sweet smells of butter and fresh fruit. “Okay, ladies, it’s time for Kate’s blueberry scones,” she announced.

  “Let me help you,.” Susan came through the archway and moved around the table to Po’s side, taking the coffee pot from her. “Another ten-pound Saturday, compliments of Kate.” She picked up a crumb from the edge of the platter and began filling mugs.

  Each Saturday Susan seemed to open up a little more, Po thought. Relaxed and laughing along with the others. Her blue eyes spoke of a life that wasn’t always easy, and Po was glad to see she had some outlet, at least, besides her classes and caring for her mother.

  “Watch your squares, everyone. Blueberries stain in the worst way,” Selma said.

  “Kate, these are amazing,” Maggie said, licking a bubble of purple from the tip of her finger. “You’re going to put Marla out of business.”

  “That’ll be the day.” Kate laughed. “This is therapy, pure and simple. It’s what I do to forget that three promising young kids in an English class I substituted in are clearly more interested in pot than Shakespeare and refuse to listen to my eloquent words of wisdom. Or when I suspect a confused and frustrated fourteen-year-old is about to run away from home, or when my mom’s next-door neighbor wanders out into the cold in his bathrobe, it’s when, well, you get the picture.” Kate’s substitute teaching was a great help in paying for a computer graphics classes she was taking at Canterbury College. And she loved the kids.

  All were commitments that surprised those around her, but no one wanted to upset the apple cart and ask Kate what her long range plans were. California? Kansas?

  “Speaking of blueberry scones,” Leah said, “feast your eyes on this fabric that Selma found at market.” She held up a length of printed fabric. Tiny yellow and green lines meandered across a deep purple background. And at uneven intervals, a bright pinpoint of white lit up the fabric like a starry night.

  “Cool,” Phoebe said, reaching over to touch the fabric. “It would be amazing in the anniversary quilt.”

  “The yellow print in my star would look perfect with it,” Eleanor said.

  Po set her empty coffee cup on the side table and watched the shared pleasure light up faces and flow around the table like a sweet fall breeze—and all over a piece of cotton fabric. She watched Selma’s eyes deepen to ocean green and the blush return to Susan’s high cheekbones. She saw Eleanor’s shoulders relax as she set a strip of her bright green square on top of the purple, and she watched Maggie and Phoebe’s wide smiles as they fingered their fabric with near reverence.

  Kate stood next to Po, her arms folded across her chest. She inclined her head toward Po. “My dear Po,” she said quietly.

  Po looked over up. She smiled. “What?”

  “I see that look on your face, watching these ladies you’ve pulled together for whatever reason. Mom used to call you ‘the gatherer’ because you bring people together. She said that even when you tried really hard to be tough, you were as soft as marshmallow fluff beneath it all.” She touched Po’s shoulder and looked around the table. “And I agree with what that look on your face says. It’s kind of amazing how a piece of fabric can cover up all the ugliness of this past week.”

  Po reached up and squeezed Kate’s hand. She nodded. But it was more than the fabric, she knew. It was what a quilting bee did for each of these special women, b
inding their lives together as surely and securely as if they had the same blood running through their veins.

  Another jingling sound sliced through the moment.

  Before either Selma or Susan could make it to the front to greet the customer, a tall man appeared in the doorway.

  His head nearly touched the top of the doorframe and a smile as big as Texas softened the strong bones of his face.

  He looked around the room, with barely a glance at Kate, and said, “We caught him, ladies. You can rest easy now. Owen Hill’s killer is in jail.”

  Chapter 8

  Next-Door Neighbor

  An hour later, Kate and Po sat at a table in the bay window of Marla’s small bakery and café, munching on a late lunch of avocado and brie sandwiches and drinking strong green tea that Marla claimed would add twenty years to one’s life.

  They’d managed to get a little more quilting in after P.J. Flanigan’s surprise pronouncement—and equally quick exit—but concentration didn’t come easily, and the session ended early.

  “Selma looked like she shed ten years in those few minutes,” Po said. “She was more worried about all this than she let on.”

  Kate nodded and the two continued to munch on their sandwiches, thoughts of the last week playing in their heads.

  Finally, Kate broke the silence.

  “So, are you convinced?”

  Po laughed. It was almost as if her best friend had passed along a special gift to this daughter, who was so unlike her mother in other ways. Like right this moment—when Kate was reading Po’s thoughts, as clearly as if she were speaking them out loud.

  “Well, maybe I was wrong,” Po said. She smiled over the edge of her teacup. “Maybe it was a burglar, and maybe they caught him.”

  Kate wiped a dollop of mustard from the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “You know, the whole thing seems odd to me. This must be one dimwitted fellow.”

  Marla shuffled her way over to their table. The bakery owner’s bulk made it difficult to squeeze between the tables, and Po was reminded again that she must convince Marla to get on some kind of a weight loss program or she would surely die before she turned fifty. And then where would they all be? Absolutely no one on earth could match Marla’s cheese soufflé, nor her homemade seven-grain bread.

  “So,” Marla said, leaning over the small table. Her pudgy fingers formed a tent on the tabletop. “I hear they caught the rat who did this to Owen.” Her blue-black hair was parted in the middle and pulled back severely, fastened at her neck with a thick rubber band.

  “That’s what the police tell us, Marla. I guess we’ll all sleep better tonight,” Po said.

  “Where’d they catch him?” Marla stood straight and wiped her hands on the apron that wrapped around her middle.

  “Out at the Walmart on the other side of town. Apparently, he tried to use Owen’s credit card. And when the police got there, they discovered he was wearing Owen’s Rolex watch.”

  “Geez! What a dumbnut,” Marla said.

  “Well, that’s what we thought, too,” Po said. “But P.J. says he’s not a dummy. And not a kid. The fellow claims he found the wallet and watch in a sack out at the truck plaza near the highway.”

  “Likely story.”

  “That’s what the police think, too,” Kate said. She looked down at the crumbs on her empty plate. “Marla, these avocado sandwiches are great.”

  Marla beamed. Keeping up with the college crowd and vegetarian eating trends had plunged her into a whole new domain. “Thanks, Katie. If I can satisfy you kids coming back from fancy places like Frisco or wherever you were, then I must be doing something right.” She turned back to Po. “So, has Selma settled down? She was in such a twit about all this.”

  “Selma’s fine. I think that finding the body of a dear friend in one’s back door might put any of us in a twit.”

  “Friends? Selma and Owen weren’t friends, at least not lately. He was pushing to have a brick sidewalk put in all along this street. That would have been bad news—big time—for Selma.”

  “I understood it was Ambrose and Jesse who were pushing for that,” Po said.

  “Well, sure, them. They think they control taste in this neighborhood. The arbiters of taste, Daisy calls them. But I know for a fact that Mary Hill agreed with them and thought the brick sidewalk would look mighty good outside her fancy store. And she had Owen wrapped around her little finger when it came to that highfalutin store of theirs.”

  “I see,” Po said, not wishing to pursue the topic further. Marla had mastered the fine art of gossip as carefully as her recipe for cheese soufflé. She also had a reputation for confusing facts, which made her tongue dangerous.

  “So how’s that quilt coming along for Selma? That’s a nice thing you’re doing for her,” Marla asked.

  “It’s coming fine,” Kate said. “It’s a beautiful pattern, and we each get to add our own artistic bits to it. They’re even letting me, Marla, believe it or not.”

  “Well, you better hurry with it, Katie, or Selma may not have a store to hang it in. Business down at that end of the block is slow, I hear,” Marla said. “People are a little leery of shopping at a murder scene. And then there’s the ugly talk.”

  A young woman behind the counter called out for Marla to check the rye bread before it came out of the oven. Marla shook her round head in exasperation. “Can’t get anyone to do anything around here.” Then with a wiggly wave of her fingers, she lumbered back to the kitchen, her thick white soles making squishy sounds on the linoleum floor.

  Kate looked longingly at Po’s half-finished sandwich.

  Po pushed it across the table. “Help yourself, sweetie. Marla has a way of curbing my appetite.” Po pushed herself back from the table and crossed her legs. She brushed a crumb off her jeans and watched Kate finish off the rest of her sandwich. Flaky white sprouts escaped from between the slices of whole wheat bread and floated to the table. It amazed Po that any one person could eat as much as Kate did and still be as slender and agile as a young doe.

  “What was all that talk about Selma’s store?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t know. But it’s probably nothing. What could people possibly be saying about Selma? She’s one of the finest, most hardworking women I know. Raised two children all by herself, put them both through college, and she runs that store with a business brain that rivals Warren Buffett’s.” Po glanced at her watch. “Kate, if you’re about done, I think I need to move on into my day. My Saturday list is wearing a hole in my purse.”

  “I’m ready.” Kate placed her napkin on the table and slipped her arms into a jean jacket, following Po.

  They paid their bill and moved toward the front door, made almost invisible by the sunshine streaming through the glass. Just as Kate was about to push it open, a huge shadow filled the doorframe, blocking their exit. P.J. Flanigan stood on the other side. He slowly pulled the door open. The same wide grin that Kate remembered from her high school algebra class filled his face.

  “Katie Simpson. I knew I recognized that ornery stance back there in the quilt shop. Were you hiding from me behind those bolts of fabric? Why didn’t you announce yourself? Fess up and apologize!”

  “Apologize?” Kate stared at him, hiding the fact that she had been slightly put out when he hadn’t acknowledged her earlier. “And what would that be for, Flanigan?” Kate asked.

  “So you do remember me,” P.J. said. His eyes were teasing.

  Of course she did, no matter what she’d said earlier. He had been a year ahead of her in school, so he must be thirty, thirty-one now, Kate figured—and as she looked him up and down, she decided the years had settled on him very nicely. His strong-boned face had lost the roundness of a younger P.J., the wide-set eyes had mellowed to a rich hazel, and the smile people talked about had warmed over the years.

  “Well, for going off
to UC, for one thing—and then for not coming back—oh, yeah, and for breaking my heart.” He clutched his chest and swayed back and forth, his eyes never leaving her face.

  “You’re blocking traffic, P.J.,” Po said sternly. “Marla will have you stripped of that shiny badge if you turn a paying customer away.”

  P.J. took a step backward, holding the door open for Kate and Po. He followed them to the sidewalk and planted a kiss on Po’s cheek. “And a hello to you, too, my lovely Po. I swear you get prettier every time I see you.”

  “Useless mush, but I love it. And much as I’d like to stand here and soak up your foolish talk, I have things to do and people to see. So I’m off. Kate, toodles. As for you, P.J. Flanigan, keep the peace.”

  She left them standing there together, and wondered briefly when they’d discover that Po was not only Kate’s godmother, but P.J.’s, too. Surely less important connections had brought two young people together. She began to hum and looked up at the sky. It was a bright, sunshiny day.

  Chapter 9

  Monkey Wrench

  Po walked down the street at a steady clip. She paused to admire Ambrose and Jesse’s window display of wines and distilled spirits, their colorful, carefully designed labels presented like works of fine art. Mounds of imported cheeses on wooden platters, baskets of French bread and crackers, and a tasteful arrangement of Riedel wine glasses painted a portrait as pretty as any gallery. The owners had finally been licensed to open a small wine bar inside the shop, and Po could see several people sitting at round bistro tables, sipping wine and tasting an assortment of cheese. Wine at noon would encourage a sound nap for her, she thought. A martini at sunset worked much better.

  She continued on, glancing at the lopsided window boxes outside Daisy’s flower shop. Several limp ferns surrounded a display of plastic roses. Oh dear. Daisy had beautiful fresh flowers inside but the outside display wouldn’t exactly entice customers. Perhaps she could subtly suggest that Daisy fix the rotted wood and then fill the boxes with those gorgeous bronze mums that sat in a row inside the shop.