I sat back on my heels and watched her push in the pins. “My mother taught me. She learned from her mother. It was my grandmother who originally owned this Singer sewing machine.” I pointed to my antique treadle machine with the black head decorated with gold tooling. “It still works like a dream. I’ll let you use it after a while.” I reached down and repositioned a pin so it wasn’t at risk of getting cut in two when she got to the cutting part. “I liked working with my mom on sewing, even if she did criticize me sometimes. I miss her.”
Gillian’s head shot up. “Where is she now?”
I took a deep breath. It had happened years ago, but that fact didn’t make it any easier to talk about. “In heaven, I hope. She died of cancer when I was in college. It was hard coming home on school breaks and seeing her getting worse and worse. Cancer’s such a cruel disease.”
Gillian sat back and dusted her hands. “It could be worse.”
I pushed back a reflexive feeling of defensiveness. “How could it be worse?”
“You could come home from a sleepover and find that your mom had been carted off in an ambulance and nobody would even tell you for the longest time what was going on.” Gillian’s voice trembled.
“Is that what happened to you?” I asked in a low voice.
She nodded without a word, a single tear snaking down her cheek. Then she snatched up my pincushion and began stabbing pins into the pattern until it was so well secured that even a tornado couldn’t have budged it.
Again in that low voice, I said, “What did your mom die from?”
She continued shoving pins into the fabric. “They said she choked. That’s all they told me.” She looked me in the face, all of a sudden seeming much younger than she really was. “I don’t know if that means she choked on her food or somebody choked her around the neck. Or maybe she hung herself. Nobody would ever tell me.”
“Did you ask your dad?”
“My dad,” she scoffed. “My dad didn’t even call me at the sleepover. I didn’t find out until the next day that she was dead. He told me to never speak her name again.” She dropped her gaze and concentrated on the pins. “He probably killed her.”
I gasped, shocked. “Gillian…”
“You don’t know! There were police rooting around the house for months afterwards. I thought my dad was going to get arrested and I would have to go live in some stinking foster home. Finally, they decided he wasn’t guilty and told us it was okay to leave town. We moved that weekend. We’ve never talked about my mom again.” She covered her face with her hands. “He probably killed her.”
I didn’t know what to say. She was right; I didn’t know anything about what had happened to her mother that day. “I’m sorry.” It seemed like such a feeble comment.
She scrambled to her feet and ran out of the room. I started to follow her when I heard the powder room door slam downstairs. She probably needed a few minutes to get herself together.
While waiting for her to come back, I picked up Breanna’s scarf to finish pulling out the threads to make the fringe. It was a mindless task, but it needed to be finished. No time like the present.
I reflected on the tale Gillian had told me. I admit I was shocked. Even though I suspected that a young teen’s conclusions were probably more sensationalized and emotional than the stark truth, I couldn’t shake off her suspicions. Everything I’d heard about Ryan King, as well as my own observations of his altercation with Ladd at the Games, made me believe he could be a murderer. If he had killed once, he might be more likely to kill again.
Gillian took a good twenty minutes to get settled down and return to my workroom. I was just about to go after her when I heard her moving around downstairs. She appeared in the doorway a few minutes later.
Her eyes were red, but otherwise she had regained her customary rebellious demeanor. Rather than move on to other topics of conversation, she chose to pick up where we left off. “So you see, there are worse things than cancer.”
I tried to keep my voice neutral, to cover the surprise I felt over the fact that she still wanted to talk about this painful subject. “I guess so.”
“I’ll bet your dad didn’t get mean after your mom died.” It almost sounded like a challenge in a game of one-upmanship. I could feel myself taking the bait.
“My dad was always mean. After Mom died, he was still mean. Nothing much changed.”
I didn’t really want to go into my whole family history with this volatile teen. My father could have been a poster child for the head-of-the-household alcoholic. While never being physically abusive, he managed to terrorize our whole family with his alcoholic rages. Indeed, my own experience was uncomfortably similar to Gillian’s. We just dealt with them differently. She acted out, while I had tended to avoid conflict and retreat to my room when things got hot. I’d relied on my brother to share the experience with, although Pete’s method of coping had been to numb his feelings by hanging out with the potheads and beer guzzlers in high school.
I shook off the bitter memories. Pete and I were doing just fine now, and we didn’t have to have anything to do with Dad unless we chose. Gillian had a few more years to navigate before she reached this level of independence. She was an only child, alone in her dread that her father might have killed her mother. My heart went out to her.
She stood silently in the doorway, seemingly touched by my last comment.
I beckoned her into the room. “But enough about me,” I said, “Let’s get going on this project before you have to go.” I studied the patterns laid out at my feet. “It looks like you’ve only got a few pins to go and then you can cut.” I resisted the impulse to stick them in and pointed instead.
Gillian popped in the last few pins and settled into the rhythm of cutting. She worked in silence for a few minutes, and then she said, “Did you figure out who killed Ladd Foster?”
I almost dropped Breanna’s scarf. “What do you mean?”
Her scissors snicked through the light fabric. “You told me you were trying to figure it out. What did you come up with?”
I laid Breanna’s scarf on my desk. “I haven’t landed on anyone yet. What about you? Do you have any idea who did it?”
Snip, snip, snip.
“I’ve narrowed it down to four suspects,” I said. Maybe I shouldn’t tell her this, but I continued nonetheless. “Patrick Ames, Aileen, Morris Hart, and…your dad.” I watched her closely to see how she would react. She didn’t flinch. “They were the only ones who went into the VIP tent during the time when Ladd’s flask was in there unattended.”
Snip, snip, snip.
“That’s what you told the police, then?” she mumbled, her eyes on the fabric.
I tried to remember if I’d told the police my suspicions. I left it with a nod.
“It sounds like you don’t suspect me, then.”
Was that relief I saw on her face? “Should I suspect you?”
“No!” She made her final cut and stood up. “I’m done.”
“Here, let’s put these pieces away for next time.” I pulled out a plastic shoebox, and together we folded up the blouse pieces and stowed them inside. I fished a roll of masking tape out of my desk drawer and used it to mark the lid with her name. I stashed it on a shelf and turned to face her. It might be risky, but I decided to push her. “You think your dad killed Ladd Foster, don’t you?”
“What do you know? You don’t know anything!” She turned and fled down the stairs.
I followed more slowly. Obviously, Gillian suspected her father of murder. By my calculations, he had a one-in-four chance of being the culprit. I wondered where the police were in their investigation. They hadn’t pestered Aileen since releasing her from jail. Did that mean they’d ruled her out as a suspect? I wondered if they were building a case against Ryan King, and if so, what would become of Gillian?
She had ment
ioned a fear of being sent to a foster home if her father were arrested in her mother’s death. She was probably entertaining that same fear right now. Which was worse, I wondered, living with a father you suspected was a murderer or being removed from that home to an unknown foster-care placement? Poor Gillian. She had a lot of anxiety to cope with right now.
I found her on the porch swing, pumping her feet against the floorboards to propel the swing higher than it had any business going. In my experience, porch swings were for gently swaying, not soaring to touch one’s toes to the ceiling. I hoped it could withstand the onslaught.
I sat down on a wrought-iron chair in front of her. “I’m sorry. Nothing like a murder to bring out the worst in all of us. You did a great job cutting out your blouse today. I hope you’ll come back another time to sew it. Then we can work on embroidery if you want. In the meantime, why don’t you draw pictures of what you want the decorations to look like? I think the neckline, the bottom of the sleeves, and the hemline are the best places for embroidery.”
Gillian continued to propel the swing forward. “When should I come back?”
“Let me check my planner.” I popped inside to fetch it. When I stepped back outside, I said, “We could make it a weekly thing until the blouse is done, and then go from there. Want to come back this time next week?”
We fixed an appointment time, and then waited for Ryan to pick Gillian up. I avoided talking about murder of any kind, and she simply swung on the swing until she wore herself out. Finally, Ryan arrived and collected her just before suppertime.
I went back inside the quiet house, wondering what was up with Pete and Aileen. I hadn’t seen either of them all day. Of course, I hadn’t been home much, other than for my sewing lesson with Gillian. I groaned inwardly. Upstairs, a half-pleated kilt called for my attention. I could tell I was procrastinating. I usually enjoyed a challenge, but pleats were one of those things I routinely avoided if I could. Tonight was the night to finish them up. But first, supper.
I resisted the impulse to pull out a cookbook and discover a new recipe, preferably one that took a long time to prepare. Instead, I rooted out some lunchmeat and sourdough rolls and made myself a quick sandwich. I lingered at the table with a cup of tea, stroking Mohair’s head while she snuggled in my lap. But in the end, I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had a lot of work to do.
Corgi’s kilt was actually more like one-third finished, which meant I had at least twenty pleats to go. I set a timer for half an hour, to challenge myself to see how many pleats I could finish before the time was up. I steeled myself for the task.
I was only ten minutes and two pleats into my work when the phone rang. I almost didn’t answer because I was on a roll. But I’ve never been good at ignoring the ringing of a phone, so I picked up. It was McCarthy.
“How’s the nosy seamstress this evening?”
I smiled at the sound of his voice. Talking to McCarthy was as invigorating as a plunge into cool water in the sunshine.
“I’m knuckling down to finish pleating Corgi’s kilt tonight. I haven’t gotten much work done today.”
“Too busy lunching with famous authors? How did that work out for you?”
Was McCarthy checking up on me? “We went to Over the Wall on the Commons. Evidently, Catherine likes tacos and Mexican rice.”
He started to laugh. “Sounds like you had lunch with Catherine. Or maybe Hart was the one who had lunch with Catherine.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I told him several times that my name is Daria. We even discussed the cultural roots of my name, for your information.”
McCarthy laughed harder. “You had to tell him several times? He’s definitely fixated on Catherine.” His voice sobered. “Seriously, Daria, it’s a little creepy how he’s got this obsession with you because of his novel. Better keep an eye on him, that’s all I’ll say.”
I had the exact same thought, but I wasn’t about to tell McCarthy that. What did he know about the tightrope a woman walks when it comes to going out with men? His attempt to caution me only served to put me on the defensive. “Duly noted. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? Because I have a kilt to pleat, remember?”
He could probably hear the frostiness in my voice. “Well, I’ll let you get back to work. I was just wondering if you’d learned anything new in the Foster case.”
I sat back on my heels, abandoning my effort to pin a pleat while talking on the phone. “I talked with Gillian—she came over for her sewing lesson today. I wanted to ask her about her mother’s jewelry, but she launched into a story about how her mother died. She’s worried that her father might be the murderer. She thinks he might have killed her mom in Cleveland.” I told him what Gillian had said to me. “Is there any way to look into Gillian’s mother’s death? It’s weird that her own daughter doesn’t really know how she died.”
“Do you know exactly when she died?” The smile had left McCarthy’s voice. “What was her first name?”
“I don’t know the date. Letty said they came to Laurel Springs two years ago, after the investigations were over. Wait, Letty has her engagement ring. I saw the inscription. It was…”
I closed my eyes and tried to picture the golden ring with the inscription, “Ryan and …”
“Melissa. I think it was Melissa.”
“Melissa.” I could hear him writing down her name. “I’ll look into it and let you know what I find. My chance to be nosy.”
“Oh, right, like you never get a chance to be nosy. I’m pretty sure that’s a job requirement when you work for the newspaper.”
“Probably. You should look into journalism—you’ve got the perfect temperament for it.”
We laughed together, and then he said goodbye and hung up.
I bent over my pleats once more. I vowed to keep working no matter what.
I made it through ten more pleats before I gave up. My hands were cramped and my back and knees ached. Time enough tomorrow to finish the job.
A quick glance at the clock showed me that it was well after ten o’clock. I tidied up my workroom and closed the door behind me on the way out. The house was dark and quiet. I checked my phone to see if there were any messages from Pete or Aileen, but there was nothing. I locked up the doors downstairs and retired to my bedroom.
I checked my email, to see that Julie was as good as her word. She’d emailed me a huge file of scanned images from Margaret Oliphant’s diary. I nipped downstairs and popped up a big bowl of popcorn and then settled down on my bed to read.
Julie was right; the old-fashioned handwriting was very hard to read. I was glad I had persisted in learning cursive writing in the third grade, even though my teacher had made it optional because he didn’t see much use for beautiful penmanship when a computer could do the trick. But my cursive training certainly helped me to read this historical document.
Margaret had a straightforward style of writing. She made little attempt to sustain a narrative, tending instead to simply write down what happened on any particular day. Her diary flowed in chronological order from one day to the next, with the same weight placed on a trip to the market to buy a chicken as the construction of her wedding dress. So, I almost missed it when she wrote, “I think I might be with child.”
Chapter 15
I checked back to see the date of that entry. It was May 14, 1746, and Margaret was on a ship to America as she wrote. She was seventeen years old.
I flipped back to the start of the ocean journey. Margaret and her father, Jock Oliphant, left Scotland the week after the disastrous Battle of Culloden. She was seasick at the start of the voyage, recovered, as did most of the other passengers, and then got sick again in calm seas. She told her father it was stress and motion sickness, but she confided in her diary her suspicions that her nausea had another cause. I tried to skim forward to see if those suspicions were founded, but it was hard t
o pick up after skipping some parts. I found myself slogging through passages about the ship’s meager food, the crowded conditions, and the young wounded Jacobite soldier who watched her wherever she went on the ship. She wrote of him with thinly veiled contempt, saying, “His dressings must be changed every evening, and he won’t suffer any save me to do the deed. I do it, though I hate it. I do it for C. E. and him only. If he were wounded, I would hope that some maid would provide such care for him.”
Evidently the young soldier was not her lost love. I pressed on. Margaret’s musings on her future child became more frequent, as she became more certain that she was pregnant. She wrote, “If a boy, I hope his eyes are light like his sire’s, and if a girl, I hope she has his sweet smile.” She hid her condition from her father, writing, “Dear Father counsels me on the benefits of fresh sea air to dispel seasickness. He knows not what ails me.”
I finished off my bowl of popcorn and checked the time. It was close to two in the morning. I’d been reading for over three and a half hours. I hadn’t heard either Pete or Aileen come in, but now that I stopped to listen, I could hear Pete snoring upstairs. Aileen’s room across the hall was quiet. I reflected that I’d become as enthralled in Margaret Oliphant’s story as I had been in Stu and Catherine’s. Margaret didn’t write like a bestselling thriller author, but her simple words were just as compelling.
I felt fairly certain she was indeed pregnant on her wedding day, and Judge Tremington was not the father. Now I wanted to know who was. I scrolled back through the images, looking for some that predated the Battle of Culloden and Margaret’s subsequent flight from Scotland. I couldn’t find any. I resolved to ask Julie in the morning to send me those passages as well.
I flipped past the making of the wedding dress and the bride’s description of the ceremony, telling myself that I could go back and read that story anytime. I wanted to find out about the child.
I found an entry in which Margaret described packing numerous trunks and traveling by stage to a remote location in North Carolina. A few pages later, I found a passage where she wrote of her tremendous abdominal pains and the elderly woman with callused hands and a mustache who was charged with delivering her baby. She wrote of missing her mother, one of the only references I’d read to any other family members besides her father. I tried to skim faster.
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