Buried in Quilts

by Sara Hoskinson Frommer

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “You,” he said. He stopped dead in the middle of the parking lot. “I’ve been thinking about you ever since I met you at the funeral home.”

  Good Lord.

  He took both her hands in his big paws before she could object. Then she wasn’t sure she wanted to. There was something appealing about Leon, oversize personality and all.

  “Will you go to dinner with me?”

  “Oh, thank you, but I couldn’t.” It was automatic.

  “Why not?” He still held her hands; she didn’t pull them away. “I’m single, clean, and you even knew my mother.”

  Right. Why not? It’s only dinner. I’m too old for this game, she mourned. I’ve forgotten how. And what would Rebecca say?

  That settled it.

  “Thank you, Leon, I’d love to.”

  “About seven? I’ll come for you.”

  “Oh, not tonight. I really can’t. My daughter just arrived—she’s in with the quilters. I haven’t seen her for so long. We’ve barely said hello.”

  “Tomorrow, then.”

  “Well…”

  He sealed it with a bear hug and released her. Then, suddenly businesslike, he held an expectant pen over a little black book that made her want to giggle. She recited her address and phone number with a straight face.

  “I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said, beaming. “Best bib and tucker.”

  The giggle rose in her throat. Speechless, she waved feebly and ducked back into the building. Through the big front window she watched a red sports car raise a cloud of limestone dust and accelerate into traffic scant feet ahead of a tank truck.

  What am I getting into? she thought.

  Returning to the group, she found Carolyn Ryrie holding forth on the insensitivity of the local police, and Rebecca, in town not more than an hour, in the amen corner.

  “The sergeant called it laundry!” Carolyn said. “I’ll bet he sits on handmade quilts at picnics—he looks as if he goes to a lot of picnics. He wasn’t going to do a thing.”

  “They’re all like that,” said Rebecca.

  “Well, not all,” Carolyn conceded. “The lieutenant promised to circulate a description. And when I valued it at three thousand dollars, he called it felony theft.”

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Older man, but a real hunk.”

  Joan perked up her ears. Fred?

  “Actually, that’s why I’m here today,” Carolyn said. “I’m glad to help you, but I hope you’ll help me, too.”

  “Of course, if we can,” Mabel said.

  Carolyn parked her needle again. Pulling a scrap of fabric from her pocket this time, she smoothed it out for the others to see. It was soft cotton, a warm brown with enough variation that Joan was sure Carolyn had dyed it herself. She wondered about some black marks near one edge.

  Annie Jordan leaned forward, peered at it, and muttered, “Baby-bottom brown” in Joan’s ear.

  “Lovely,” said Rebecca.

  “Is your stolen quilt all this color?” asked Mabel. “And what kind of quilt was it? Pieced? Appliqué? A traditional pattern?”

  “No, it’s original. The whole quilt is in shades of brown,” Carolyn said. “Very simple piecing, all rectangles of different sizes.”

  “What did you use?” asked Rebecca.

  “Hickory hulls for this color,” Carolyn said. “Tea. The darkest brown is from black walnut hulls. I alternated plain blocks with my own wood-block prints and printed my designs in black silk-screen ink. You can see just a little of that in the corner of this scrap.”

  “Did you sign it?”

  “No, but there can’t be two quilts like this one. The prints are my signature.”

  “You have slides, of course,” Rebecca said.

  “No, dammit. It’s only the best work I’ve ever done, but there wasn’t time. I finished it the day before the application deadline. That was okay—I live here, and the jury was willing to look at a finished quilt instead of a slide. When it made the show, I took it home and hung it out in the sun to photograph. It disappeared off the line before the light was right.”

  “What a shame,” Joan said.

  “Isn’t that always the way?” said one of the old regulars.

  “What do the prints look like?” asked Mabel.

  “They’re woodblocks, kind of rough. The designs are abstract, so they’re hard to describe. Maybe you’ve seen molas—I used some of those shapes.”

  “Never heard of ’em.”

  “What a great idea! Molas are fantastic!” Rebecca’s face glowed. “The San Blas Indian women of Panama make them for their blouses. They’re reverse appliqué—layers under layers—all curves and colors.” Her left hand escaped from under the quilt to help her talk. “You find them in museum shops sometimes—even the practice molas the little girls make, no bigger than this.” Joining its mate, her thimbled right hand framed a postcard in the air. “But the best ones are usually old and worn, with faded colors. A lot of them are abstract. Carolyn, I wish I could have seen your designs.”

  “I still have the layout,” Carolyn said. “And the woodblocks—I printed them on paper for the police. Don’t know why I didn’t think to bring some today.”

  “You know,” said Joan slowly, “if you could print some on your dyed fabric, I’m sure the committee would be willing to post it at the show with a notice about your stolen quilt. Mary Sue Ellett would be the person to ask.”

  “She sent me here.”

  “That’s right, you said that. I’ll tell her you worked today. This orchestra quilt is her baby.”

  “Good idea, Mom,” said Rebecca, rocking and lifting again. “People come to this show from all over. No matter where the thief takes it, someone might spot it.”

  “Trouble is, I don’t have any more fabric,” Carolyn said. She folded her scrap and tucked it back into her pocket. “Once I finished piecing and started quilting, I made the rest into a shirt for a friend of mine.”

  “Would he lend it to you? Or wear it to the show? Kind of a living poster?” Joan asked. She slipped another waxed thread through its elusive target and twirled the knot as if she’d been doing it for years.

  “Um … I don’t think so. That was months ago.” Carolyn picked up her needle and started quilting again, avoiding Joan’s eyes. “We’re not exactly on good terms anymore.”

  Joan backed off. “Not exactly good” had to be mild for a relationship that could deter this woman from recovering the best work she’d ever done.

  For a little while the needles danced on in silence. Then, gradually, each quilter’s running stitches met the work of the woman to her left. First to finish her section of the border, Kitty stood up and stretched. Carolyn quickly followed her example.

  “Point me to the facilities,” she said, and they left the room together. The others wasted no time.

  “Who is she, anyway?” asked a regular whose name escaped Joan.

  “Never saw her before,” said Annie. “Not from around here, that’s for sure.”

  “Her name is Carolyn Ryrie,” Joan said. “Mary Sue sent her to help. You know why—she told you about her quilt.”

  “No, not her. The other one.”

  “She’s that cousin stayed with Edny,” said the other quilter whose face was more familiar than her name. “What’s her name—Kate?”

  “Kitty,” Joan said. “Kitty Graf.”

  “That’s it. I told Edny. She’s got her eye on the main chance, I said. And I was right. You can’t tell me Edny Ellett needed a note to go out the door!”

  “Hold your horses, Ruby,” said Mabel. “What do those notes have to do with anything?”

  Ruby, that’s who she was.

  “No fool like an old fool,” Ruby said shortly, her needle rocking faster with the force of her emotion. “The vultures don’t wait till you’re dead. And if you look like you’ve already lost your marbles, it makes it that much easier for them.”

  “
I know all about vultures.” Annie brought her knitting to the seat Kitty had vacated. “A real estate man brings me a poinsettia every Christmas. Keeps after me to sell him my house.” She chuckled. “Ten years ago I made sure he’d never get it—I wish I could be there to see his face when he hears what’s in my will. But this is different, Ruby. Kitty took good care of Edna. And she’s not the queerest bird in that family by a long shot. Look at Leon.”

  Here we go, Joan thought.

  “You know he’s living on the qt with the oldest Wheatcraft girl,” said Mabel, weaving her last stitch back through the batting before bringing it to the surface and snipping the thread.

  “Not anymore, he’s not.” Annie’s four knitting needles clicked around the toe of her sock. “She threw him out last fall. I don’t know who his meal ticket is now.”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it?” said Mabel. “He looks to come in for a pretty penny from Edna, even split three ways.”

  Joan was glad to see Kitty and Carolyn return. The last to finish, Rebecca had been working silently.

  “Sorry to be so slow,” she said as she cut her thread. “I’m new at this.”

  “That’s all right, honey,” said Mabel. “Good quilting takes time. But I’ll have the binding ready for you in just a little bit.” She gathered up the quilt and carried it over to the sewing machine that stood ready in a corner of the activity room.

  While Mabel machine-stitched a dark brown binding to the raw edges, Ruby and the other woman put on their coats. Joan thanked them for coming to help.

  A few minutes later, she wasn’t surprised when Rebecca and Carolyn decided to leave together.

  “Carolyn knows how to find your house,” Rebecca said. “How soon will you be there to let me in?”

  “Andrew might be home now, but it doesn’t matter,” Joan said. “I made you an extra key so you could come and go on your own.”

  They collected it from her shoulder bag, hanging on its hook in the office.

  “Thanks,” Rebecca said. “See you, Mom.”

  “For supper?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t count on me.”

  Well, no. Too bad we didn’t have this conversation before I turned down a date for tonight. But it’s not as if you asked me to. I did that all by myself.

  Mabel spread the quilt facedown on the tables to hem the binding. In the sun now slanting through the single window onto the muslin backing, the instruments of the orchestra stood out in outline, even without their colors. All those little stitches, Joan thought. If I hadn’t watched them doing it …

  Mabel and Annie each took a side, and Kitty took one end, leaving the other to Joan.

  Blind-stitching sounded ominous.

  “I’d better just watch for a minute,” Joan said.

  She was reassured to see nothing more complicated than hemming a skirt. Kitty, of the long quilting stitches, was in the running here. Joan set herself to try.

  The puffy batting sticking out of the quilt’s edges filled the folded binding and made it easy to hide her stitches. But looking down the long row ahead of her, Joan suddenly understood the emperor who had once waved a dismissing hand and said, “Too many notes, Herr Mozart.”

  The sun was lower and she was only halfway down her side when the other three finished theirs.

  “I’ll take it home to do that last little bit,” Kitty said. “Mary Sue will tell me where to deliver it.”

  Joan didn’t argue.

  Widow’s Troubles

  The backpack and duffel bag in the silent kitchen had to be Rebecca’s. But she wasn’t there. No sign of Andrew, either.

  Joan put yesterday’s ham and beans on the stove. She greased the big cast-iron skillet and put it in the oven to heat up while she mixed a batch of cornbread to bake in it. Swiss chard for greens, she thought—all Rebecca’s favorites. Her own, for that matter.

  With supper in the works, she sat down to check the paper—obituaries first, but nobody else from the center had died. Then she turned to the funnies. The phone waited just long enough for her to kick off her shoes and put her feet up. She padded back, the kitchen floor cold against her soles.

  Alex Campbell sounded as if she might have been climbing stairs—or conducting Wagner.

  “Thank God you’re home.”

  “What’s the problem, Alex?” Stretching the cord, Joan backed up to the oven’s warmth.

  “We’re going to have to set up for Wednesday, after all. Mary Sue called me this morning. And you know the school janitor wouldn’t touch the inn.”

  Joan knew the janitor. She counted it a minor miracle every time he showed up at a rehearsal. Soothing the players and telephoning the principal to unlock the door when he didn’t were among the orchestra manager’s less enviable chores.

  “Are there at least chairs?”

  “Not even that. Joan, what will we do?” Now, away from the podium, Alex was deferring to her.

  “Don’t worry about it, Alex. I’ll think of something.” She was already thinking of the complaints she’d hear. Folding chairs from Snarr’s, the only practical answer on such short notice, would jab the players in all the wrong places.

  Might as well get it over with. With Alex’s gratitude still breathless in her ears, she called Bud Snarr at home and promoted not only chairs, but hauling and a man to set them up.

  “Long as you show him where,” Bud said. “When do you need ’em?”

  “We practice Wednesday night. I could come over that afternoon, or Tuesday evening.”

  “Tuesday’s good,” Bud said. “Around four?”

  Joan kept forgetting how early “evening” started in southern Indiana.

  “Is a little past five okay? I get off work at five.” And the Sagamore Inn closed at five. Oh, well. She could arrange for a key.

  “Sure thing,” said Bud.

  Joan dialed Mary Sue’s number. No answer.

  She stewed.

  It’s bad enough that she’s dumping on me again. But she could have called me at work—I was working on her big project, no less. She probably knew what I’d say. So she got Alex involved in something a conductor shouldn’t have to worry about. And because it was Alex, I not only said yes, but now I have to find Mary Sue to let me into the building after hours.

  Then the simple answer came. Fred Lundquist answered on the second ring.

  “Sure, I can let you in,” he said. “If you even need letting in. Sounds as if people will be working late tomorrow to hang the show. If they aren’t, just come across the street. I’ll be there.”

  Joan chopped the chard with fierce strokes. When Andrew and Rebecca walked in together, she was just pulling the skillet of cornbread out of the oven.

  “Timed that right.” Andrew shucked his coat. “Think I’ll stay.”

  Rebecca, still in her pea jacket, looked at the kitchen table set for three.

  “You were that sure I’d come?” she asked. Back to prickly.

  “Nope.” Joan reached for a knife. “But I didn’t want to hop up in the middle of supper if you turned up at the last minute.” She grinned at her daughter. “I’m glad you did.”

  She cut the cornbread in wedges and set the hot skillet on a tile beside the beans and her last jar of dark woods honey. The farmer’s market wouldn’t open again until May.

  Andrew pulled up a chair and helped himself.

  “Bec, you rate the fatted calf. I haven’t seen that honey for weeks.”

  Rebecca didn’t answer.

  Joan sat down. She slowly crumbled a wedge of cornbread onto her plate and ladled beans over it.

  Rebecca finally tossed her coat on her duffel bag, washed her hands at the kitchen sink, and joined them. She went on the attack almost immediately.

  “Andrew told me about the orchestra murders last fall. Sounds as if you solved them and gave the police all the credit.”

  “I helped,” Joan said. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “You’d better start thinking that way,
or men will walk all over you. Pass the butter, will you, Andrew?”

  “You really believe that?”

  “I know it.” Rebecca reached for the honey. “My boss makes my ideas sound like his own at first. If they fall flat, he lets everyone know where they came from. You can guess who gets the raise if they pan out.”

  Joan ached at the bitterness she was hearing. She risked a direct question.

  “Are you still at that bank?”

  “Two years now. But as soon as I can swing it, I’m going into business for myself.”

  “Doing what?” Andrew asked.

  “I’m designing a specialty line.” Rebecca’s eyes suddenly danced. “You’ll see.”

  But that’s all she would say. Even Andrew couldn’t budge her. She changed the subject.

  “Mom, tell me about that man Kitty wouldn’t go home with. What did he want with you?”

  The quilters had given Rebecca a real earful. Joan took a deep breath.

  “He asked me out.”

  “You aren’t going!”

  How could a daughter make her feel ten years old? Joan laid down her fork and worked to lower her voice.

  “Yes, I am. I’m having dinner with Leon tomorrow.”

  “Mother, he’s such a sleaze! The way he looked at you! And didn’t you hear what those old ladies were saying about him? He sounds like a real con man. At the bank, widows who’ve been fleeced by guys like him cry on our shoulders.”

  Andrew tried to help.

  “Great supper, Mom.”

  Joan waved him off and looked Rebecca in the eye. “Is it really so hard for you to imagine that a man might want to invite me out with no ulterior motives? I’ve been alone for years. Now I’ll see men if I choose. And I’ll choose the men I see. Is that clear?”

  “I just don’t want to see you get taken in by a—”

  “Stop right there, Rebecca. You’re not the only person with the right to make her own mistakes.”

  They ate in silence. Rebecca picked at her food.

  What got into me? Joan thought. I never talk like that. And what if she’s right? I heard what they were saying about Leon. Suppose I’d heard it first—would I have said yes to him?

  Loneliness washed over her. Here I am with the two people I love most in the world, she thought, and I feel more alone than when I’m by myself.