No wonder they’re panicking, Fred thought. It wouldn’t make a dent in the economy of a city the size of Indianapolis, but here …
The quilt show was to Oliver what the football season was to towns with bigger, more sports-minded colleges. It brought in so much outside money that the owner of the restaurant half a block from the historic inn didn’t even blink when visitors paraded into his spotless rest rooms without ordering. For a couple of weeks each year the show provided all the customers he could serve. Oliver’s row of antique and gift shops flourished, the downtown hotel was booked solid, the OliveRest Motel’s VACANCY sign sprouted a seldom-used NO, and all the gas stations jacked up their prices.
With Fine Arts cosponsoring the show, Oliver College cleared a welcome profit by renting out dormitory rooms vacated for spring break. Grumbling all the while about the inconvenience, students locked up their stereos and cleaned house in exchange for a discount on their second-semester room rates.
Fred stretched back, lacing his fingers into a cushion for his head and anchoring his toes under a desk drawer to protect his fingers from crashing into the shelf behind him when he leaned too far. He and the old swivel chair had reached a truce of sorts.
“Just what do they want?” he asked.
“What they want is one thing.” Altschuler grinned suddenly and tapped the desk. “What they get is you. I don’t care how you make them like it, as long as you don’t foul up the duty roster. Plug holes in their security with their people, not ours.” The grin disappeared. “But plug ’em.”
“Any idea how they run things?”
“Nope. I steer clear. Last year Janice was after me to spend a thousand dollars for a quilt you couldn’t even sleep under. Can you believe that? She was going to hang it behind the couch.” He shook his head. “I stopped that in a hurry. She didn’t speak to me for a week.”
Fred nodded that he was listening, his face carefully neutral. He’d been through enough Altschuler family wars to know that safety lay in silence. If Linda Lundquist had been the spendthrift Janice Altschuler was, maybe he’d have dumped her, instead of the other way around. Fred, not Linda, had been the one who put money into their house. He’d thought of it as protecting his investment. In the end, of course, it was Linda’s house—and Linda’s capital gains when she left town. And Warren Altschuler, though not a friend, had seen him through the worst of it.
Altschuler sighed.
“Mary Sue Ellett’s running things,” he said. “Good luck.”
* * *
Later, Fred wondered whether the Romans had wished the Christians luck before throwing them to the lions. He thought it would have done about as much good.
The committee’s security arrangements weren’t bad. Only the front door of the Sagamore Inn was to be open to the public. Small items—patterns, books and videos on quilting, scissors and rotary cutters, quilting templates, thread, beeswax, and special leather thimbles—would be sold in the ordinary way during the show, but any quilts sold were to be left on display with the rest until the last day, with red dots stuck beside their listed prices. Only then, on receipt of an official claim check, would a committee member bring each quilt out to its owner at a table blocking the entrance to the first display room.
At the heart of the system was the “hall sitter,” someone dragooned into spending long hours watching people, quilts, and the other doors. At night all the doors could be locked and a guard posted, but in the daytime the fire marshal’s rules required that all doors open from the inside.
“The side and back doors represent the greatest threat,” Fred said. “You can’t tuck something as big as a quilt under your coat and fake your way past the desk at the front, but it wouldn’t be hard to skip out the side if no one’s near.”
A withering look from Mary Sue Ellett told him how original that thought was.
Traditionally, Fred learned, rubber stamps took the place of tickets, with a different patch stamped on the visitors’ hands each day. Committee members, judges, lecturers, and commercial exhibitors would be issued photo ID cards.
He volunteered the department’s Polaroid. Mary Sue put her foot down.
“I will not drag our distinguished authorities into the police station for a mug shot. Besides, the license branch camera turns them out with a plastic coating.” So does ours, Fred thought.
“For a fee,” one committee member objected. “I think we should seriously consider the lieutenant’s offer. Why throw money away?”
“The police station’s closer, too,” said another.
“We’ve always used the license branch,” said Mary Sue.
And it was settled.
Fred didn’t take it personally. He suspected that Mary Sue’s distinguished authorities were in for a rude awakening.
He sat back while they discussed procedures for hanging the show. Only the police, the president of the historical society, the chair of the Oliver College Fine Arts Department, and Mary Sue would have keys to the building.
“We’ll do most of the work Tuesday and Wednesday,” she said. “Wednesday night the orchestra is coming in for a rehearsal, and the judges and lecturers will preview the show. Judging will start Thursday. I don’t know yet when the Amish quilts will arrive from the state museum. If they come late, we’re going to need some last-minute help. At least they’re coming. We’re still on tenterhooks about that wonderful Susan McCord vine quilt from the Henry Ford Museum.”
“I thought that was a sure thing,” said a young man with a beard whom Fred didn’t know.
“They were sympathetic because she was a Hoosier. But then they heard we were in a historic building. They don’t just want security and a glass case. They may insist on total climate control.”
“Can’t be done,” the man said.
“I know,” said Mary Sue. “So we’ll have to be flexible. I’ve saved one whole room for it. If we’re turned down at the last minute, I have something else in mind.”
At the end of the meeting, Fred came back to the all-important watchers.
“I take it that you already have your roster of hall sitters?”
“If we did, I’d sleep easier,” Mary Sue said. “We’re only two weeks away. I didn’t get any cooperation to speak of from the orchestra, even though we’re doing a major fundraiser for them. The manager wouldn’t even ask them for me; I had to do it myself.”
Fred hid a smile at the image of Joan Spencer standing up to Mary Sue Ellett. He remembered her as warm and appealing, but she’d certainly held her own last fall when he was suspecting her friends in the orchestra.
Now, faced with someone who clearly would have no trouble confronting anyone, he thought he saw a way to solve two problems in one.
“Miss—?” he asked.
“Carolyn Ryrie,” the woman said. “And it’s Ms.”
“Lieutenant Lundquist, Ms. Ryrie.” They shook hands. “We’ll do our best to find your property. How much would you say it’s worth? Not its potential winnings, you understand, but a sale price?”
“It’s listed at three thousand dollars.”
“Then we’re talking about felony theft, which we take very seriously. I’m working closely with the organizers of the quilt show, and I’m sure I can promise you some expert help in tracking down your missing quilt—in addition, of course, to what we can do.”
“Well,” she said, and for the first time he could see the attractive woman behind the anger.
“I think they’d be even more inclined to help if you could see your way clear to volunteering some time next week to watching the quilts on display. They’re at risk, too. And if you think you recognize someone who might have taken yours, we can be there in no time.”
She thawed. Smiled.
“I was going to the show anyway,” she said. “Sure, Lieutenant, I’ll do it. And thanks.”
“Sergeant Pruitt,” Fred said.
“Yessir?” Kyle had been standing back, probably hoping to be forgotten. Not for the firs
t time, Fred wondered how he’d ever made sergeant.
“Get a description of Ms. Ryrie’s missing quilt—a photograph, if she has one—and any information she can give us about its disappearance.”
“Yessir.”
Mother’s Delight
Rebecca sounded a long way away. The distance between them crackled in Joan’s ear.
“Mom, did I wake you?”
“Rebecca! No, it’s fine. I’m just getting dressed.” Joan smiled into the receiver. “It’s so good to hear you.”
“What time is it in Indiana, anyway?”
“Seven-thirty. Do you want me to call you back?”
Sitting on the edge of the bed in her slip, only one leg into her panty hose, she fumbled for the pencil and pad on the bookcase headboard.
“That’s okay.” Rebecca wasn’t giving anything away. Same old Rebecca. Or was she?
“Are you all right?”
“Mother, of course I’m all right.” Of course, Joan thought. You’re not quite twenty, you’re on your own, your old telephone was disconnected, you haven’t answered a letter for months—what could possibly be wrong? She fought back the sarcasm and tried to inhale the relief.
“Andrew said you called last night.”
“I tried again,” Rebecca said. “But nobody answered.”
“I was already outside. I couldn’t unlock the door in time.”
“You seeing somebody, or what?”
The words were adult, but the child came through loud and clear. Rebecca had loved her father as fiercely as she had resented her fishbowl life as a preacher’s kid. She had made it abundantly plain to Joan that no one else could ever possibly live up to him. After his death, more than one man had backed away from the girl with the stony face—and her mother.
“I was on my way to work.”
“At night?”
“Orchestra night. I wrote you about the orchestra.”
Rebecca could spar like this all day, Joan knew. Shutting her mind to the clock and resisting the temptation to hurry things along, she leaned her ear into the receiver and snaked her left leg into the bunched-up nylon.
The wait was mercifully brief.
“Mom, do you think you could put me up for a while?”
Andrew had been right.
“Of course!” Joan concentrated on the smile she wanted Rebecca to hear. “That’s wonderful. When are you coming?”
“Next week. I’ve entered the Oliver quilt competition. It’s only one of the most prestigious small shows in the whole country.”
“It is?”
“You mean you didn’t know?”
Ignorant about quilts and quilting, Joan hadn’t known that anyone outside southern Indiana was likely to care what happened in Oliver. Nor had she ever known Rebecca to show the slightest interest in anything domestic.
“All I know is that the symphony’s going to play for it.”
“Well, that ought to give you an idea, right there.”
What it gave her was a headache and a mental image of Mary Sue Ellett in charge of an even grander wingding than she’d suspected.
“Mom …” Rebecca began, and stopped.
“Mmm?”
“You … you won’t get in my way while I’m there, will you?”
Joan took a deep breath and tried the obvious.
“It’s a little house, Rebecca. We’ll probably trip over each other.”
“You know what I mean,” Rebecca said. “I don’t want you asking me where I’m going, and when I’m coming in, and … and bothering me.”
“Don’t worry.” Joan’s sense of humor came to the rescue. “I won’t bother you if you won’t bother me.”
“You are seeing someone.”
The worst of it, Joan thought after they hung up, was that it wasn’t true. Even without Rebecca to scare them off, the few eligible men she’d met in Oliver were keeping their distance. It would be a shame to put up with all that suspicion for nothing. She’d have to invite Fred Lundquist over. She wondered what Rebecca would say to a police detective.
She wondered, for that matter, what Rebecca would say about anything. Rebecca had left home so young, unwilling to accept any advice, determined to make her way in the world armed only with a high school diploma and her own talents. Joan understood her need to separate, but she wished Rebecca weren’t so all-fired stubborn about her independence. Somehow, though, her vulnerable daughter had landed on her feet, at least at first. She’d found a place to live and some kind of job at a bank where one of her housemates worked. Two years later, that was all Joan knew about it. She hoped they were treating her right—the disconnected phone suggested money problems Rebecca wouldn’t want to admit to her.
Rushing now, she pulled Tuesday’s gray skirt and her favorite red cable sweater over a fresh blouse and gave her mostly brown hair half a dozen hard brush strokes before skewering it into a loose twist. She laced her feet into gray Hushpuppies and ran downstairs to the kitchen.
By the time she left the house she was humming.
* * *
The Elletts didn’t come to the Senior Citizens’ Center that afternoon, but the shirttail cousin did. Kitty Graf quietly performed the honors on a step stool—some tall person with scant common sense had hung the carved memorial board too high for most of the little old regulars. Now Edna’s nameplate shone in the late-afternoon sun below that of Elmer Rush, briefly the orchestra’s first bassoonist, who had died suddenly only a few months earlier.
Joan wondered which of the old people would be next. She was thankful that the memorial was brief.
“We just want to remember,” Annie Jordan had told her on one of her first days at work. “Some like to sing. I’ll tell you, though—anybody caterwauls over me when my time comes, I’ll come back to haunt ’em.”
Joan hoped Annie’s time was a long way off. She had come to love this plainspoken old woman.
Shaking hands with Edna’s old friends, Kitty looked less forlorn than she had at Snarr’s. The circles under her eyes were still there, though. Small wonder, Joan thought. She’s stuck with the Elletts.
Kitty caught her eye and Joan went over to her.
“Would you mind coming out to the car?” Kitty asked. “I’m supposed to give you a quilt.”
“Why me?” But Joan followed her out into the sunshine.
“It’s the one the orchestra guild made. Edna was too sick to quilt with them, but Mary Sue volunteered her to do the edges and hem the binding. She managed a little.” Kitty pulled the sheet-wrapped bundle from the back seat of an ancient Buick.
Joan took it but wondered what on earth to do with it.
“Mary Sue said you’d get someone here to finish it off,” Kitty added.
It’s not enough to want the orchestra to quilt-sit, Joan thought. But at least she asked them herself. Now she’s really dumping on me.
Joan’s face must have given her away. Kitty reached for the bundle.
“You didn’t know? Never mind. Maybe I can help.” Sudden tears made her eyes bright. “I have time now.”
Joan hugged the quilt.
“Kitty, I don’t know the first thing about quilts. But it’s true that we’re planning to raise money with this one. I guess it’s part of my job—my other job. And someone here might be able to finish it. Don’t worry about it.”
“I wouldn’t mind. Really. Edna quilted most of it before she got so bad.”
“You’re sure?” Joan was grateful. “I’ll ask at the center, but we may have to take you up on that. There’s not much time left.”
At five, when the center’s board of directors gathered, Edna Ellett’s death headed the unspoken agenda.
“I still can’t believe it,” said Annie Jordan, knitting without watching. Like Edna, she couldn’t bear to sit idle—and she didn’t count mere meetings as work. “Last week she looked pretty good. She was in bed, but she said she felt all right.”
“You saw her?” asked Margaret Duffy, who had been Joan�
��s sixth-grade teacher when her father had spent a sabbatical year at Oliver College, and who had recommended her to the board when she’d arrived in Oliver last year without a job. Margaret’s hands lay folded over her ample middle.
“I saw her most weeks,” Annie said. “If I couldn’t stop by, I’d call. I’m about the only one who did. That crew at her house this week probably won’t recognize half the things they’re picking over.” Her fingers flicked the yarn.
“Leon certainly won’t—not that he’ll care,” said Margaret. “He’s feathered his nest without any help from his mother. I imagine those girls are at it tooth and nail over Edna’s pie safe and cherry corner cupboard. Not to mention her quilts.”
“Alice doesn’t know a quilt from a comfort,” Annie said.
“That’s never stopped her,” said Margaret. “Last time she came up from Kentucky before she moved out west, she decided Edna’s wildflower garden was a weed patch and had a man with a Rototiller over there burying maidenhair fern and lady slippers. Edna had managed to get them to grow in town. Trust Alice not to ask.”
Margaret would know, Joan thought. She’d probably taught the Elletts in school.
“Alice was stubborn as a child,” Margaret went on as if she’d read Joan’s mind. “She never let facts get in her way. She just talked her husband into moving to California to get rich, and now she’s stuck there—they can’t afford to move back to Kentucky. Mary Sue’s the practical one.”
“Mary Sue, she knows quilts, anyway,” Annie conceded. “She was always pushing Edna to let her show them, but Edna never would. She had some old ones—real special—and dealers and museums breathing down her neck. Now Mary Sue can haul out all the antiques. She’ll let Alice think she’s getting the best, but she’ll glom on to anything that matters for herself.”
“Mary Sue deserves something,” Margaret said quietly. “She made sure Edna had what she needed.”
Lowering her eyes to her knitting for the first time, Annie stuck one needle in her topknot and slid pairs of stitches along the other, tightening her lips as if counting. Joan couldn’t see anything in the plain sock to count.
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