The Double Wedding Ring

by Clare O'Donohue

  “It wouldn’t just be my business,” I said. “It would be part of Someday Quilts.”

  “I was thinking about that.” Eleanor swiveled her chair toward me. She had a blank expression on her face, the one she used when she was doing her best not to influence me. “I sort of jumped the gun with that name. It’s your pattern company. You should decide what to call it. I was thinking maybe Nell Fitzgerald Designs.”

  “Or Manhattan Modern Quilts,” my mother suggested.

  “But I don’t live in Manhattan.”

  “But you could. I mean, this is exactly the sort of career that would allow you the freedom to go anywhere.”

  She reached into her oversize purse and pulled out a stack of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheets of paper. There was something about quilting printed on them, but it wasn’t until she handed them over that I could see where she was going with this.

  “Tokyo?” I asked.

  “Did you know that quilting is huge in Japan?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t know that you knew. And what does that have to do with my little quilt patterns?”

  “That’s my point. They’re not little quilt patterns. They could be the start of a major company. I printed this off the Internet yesterday. There’s this big festival there, lots of really amazing things. You should go and see what they’re doing.”

  “Mom, I’ve never even been to Houston.”

  “Texas? What does that have to do with anything?”

  My grandmother took the papers from me and set them on the desk. “It’s a quilt show, Patty. And your mother has a point, Nell. You should see the trends, see what’s hot, what’s changing. If you’re going to make a go of this . . .”

  Some people have families who laugh when they announce their dreams. Mine went into uber-support mode. My head was swimming. All I wanted was to make a pattern of one of my quilts and maybe sell it at the shop; make my way slowly toward a career in quilting. But my family wouldn’t be happy until I was the Bill Gates of the quilt world.

  I sat opposite Eleanor and pushed back my chair to give me a little room to think. Unfortunately, I accidently hit Barney in the leg. He sat up with a start, accepted my apology, but left the room. No doubt in search of a place less crowded and dangerous.

  “I think I’m going to start with a couple of patterns,” I said. “The gazebo quilt and maybe the Amish bars quilt I made. They’re easy to re-create and both have some nice appliqué elements that would be simple for anyone. I’ll sell the patterns at the shop and on our website, and see how it goes. If more than ten people like them enough to buy, then I’ll make more.”

  “Nell . . .” my mother started.

  “And we’ll call the company Someday Quilts Designs because it is part of the quilt shop and it should remain that way. We should sit down later and figure out a logical amount to print, and also the profit split. Natalie kicks back a percentage of her fees for longarm services to pay for the machine and the space. If it’s okay with you, Grandma, I’d like to do the same. Any questions?”

  My grandmother smiled. “I think you’ve covered it.”

  “Thanks, both of you, for the help. Mom, I do like the idea of checking out quilt shows and the wholesale market shows to see what the trends are. And if there’s ever a time I can afford to go to Tokyo, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. Right now, though, we have customers in the shop, so I think I’ll go to work.”

  I got up and left the office, just in time to see Susanne and Natalie sort out their differences on the quilting.

  “We’re going with stippling in the background of the feathered border,” Natalie said, referring to the squiggly quilt design that was often used to fill in spaces and flatten areas. I imagined Susanne liked the idea of the quilted feathers popping from the background, and stippling would certainly help with that. “And my mom has some ideas about how you should quilt your gazebo quilt.”

  “Wonderful.” I tried to suppress a smile but couldn’t.

  Jesse and Allie weren’t the only instant family I had. The quilt group had given me a large group of sisters, all of whom were pretty open about telling me how to live my life.

  “Dru!” Natalie called out as the door opened. I turned around to see our librarian come into the shop. She’d visited before many times. Dru had become a quilter after the town had joined together to make a cathedral windows quilt as a Christmas project for Charlie when he was down on his luck.

  “Strange to see you outside the library,” I said.

  She laughed. “I know. People think I live there, which I practically do.” She handed me a large hardcover book. “This is for you.”

  “Designing Patterns,” I read. “Taking Your Artwork and Turning It into a Business.”

  “I heard you were doing that with your quilts,” she said. “So I brought this over. I checked it out for you for two weeks, but if you need it longer let me know.”

  “How did you find out about the patterns?”

  “Jake over at the butcher shop told me when he came to return some DVDs to the library. His wife overheard it when she was getting coffee at Jitters. He knew I’d be interested because I’m always talking about how beautiful your quilts are.”

  My instant family had expanded once again, to the entire town of Archers Rest. “This will be very helpful,” I told her. “I’ll read it cover to cover. How’s your car these days?”

  “Perfect. Except for the scratch.”

  “What scratch?”

  “It’s weird. Right on the door handle of the passenger side. I would never have even seen it, except I gave Charlie a ride and he noticed it. You want to see?”

  Not only did I want to see, but Natalie quickly covered Eleanor’s quilt with the muslin and she and Susanne followed me out of the shop without our coats. Susanne, at least, had the sense to grab her sweater, and as she joined us, she wrapped her Irish wool fisherman’s cardigan tightly around herself.

  I leaned over to examine the handle. Dru was right. Two lines had been scratched into the handle. “They’re perfectly straight,” I said. “Hard to do if you are keying a car.”

  “It looks like something left by a clip,” Susanne suggested.

  “As if something were attached?” I asked. Susanne nodded. I looked at the door handle again. “Dru, your car was parked facing west on the day of the shooting?”

  “Yeah. The passenger side was to the street, and the driver’s side was to the curb. Why?”

  I stood up. “I’ve been wrong about something,” I said. “Completely wrong.”

  CHAPTER 36

  I had assumed that whoever shot up Main Street was working with a partner. It made sense given the evidence. Jesse had seen a flash coming from that direction just as the shooting began. The logical conclusion was that a partner might have been standing there signaling the shooter that Jesse was on the street. But if the shooter acted alone, everything about the investigation had changed.

  Dru had to hurry back to the library, but Susanne, Natalie, and I rushed into Jitters for hot drinks and a huddle. Carrie saw us shivering and knew even we weren’t dumb enough to go out into the street on a freezing January morning without coats—unless a clue had lured us. She immediately left Rich to deal with the customers and joined us to talk over this development.

  We sat on the purple couch in the front, as if we needed to look out at the crime scene, but we stayed close, whispering our suspicions and questions.

  “How could the shooter have made the flash from the roof?” Susanne asked. “Didn’t someone else have to do it?”

  “No,” I said. “You were exactly right about the marks on Dru’s car being made from some kind of clip. What if the shooter had fastened a device to the door handle? Something small that wouldn’t have been noticed in the ten or fifteen minutes it would have been on the car. In the winter people tend to hurry from place to pl
ace. And usually they’re so covered with hats and scarves and upturned collars it could have drawn little interest. The shooter, acting alone, could have attached the device, climbed up on the roof, aimed at my grandmother’s shop, and pulled the trigger. Then, with people running for safety, anyone looking around would have had their attention drawn toward the flash.”

  Carrie jumped in. “Just those moments of distraction would have given the shooter time to get off the roof and into the alley. Right behind my coffee shop.”

  We all instinctively looked toward the back door—the only thing between the killer and the rest of us on the day of the shooting.

  “That’s all well and good as a theory, but what kind of device?” Natalie asked.

  “I’m not sure about that,” I admitted. “It could have been a mirror, and he positioned a light at it to create the reflection of a flash, or maybe it was a small firecracker. Something that would have drawn Jesse’s attention as the shooting started.” I didn’t know much about creating a diversion, but I knew I was on to something. “The shooter did something to make that flash happen once he was on the roof.”

  “If you’re right about the flash,” Natalie said, “the only person likely to look for a source would be a police officer. It seems like a lot of trouble to go to unless you wanted Jesse on the street.”

  “I agree,” I said. “When I went up on the roof yesterday I could see people walking in the street. I could see Greg walking into Jitters, almost to the point where he was at the door, so the shooter would have been able to see Jesse walking out. And that’s when he set off the flash.”

  Susanne wasn’t buying it. “And you’re sure you wouldn’t be seen from up there? Most of the buildings on this street are only one story high.”

  I thought about that. The state police had been on the roof the day of the shooting. They were easy to spot, but they hadn’t been trying to hide. “When I made a small attempt to conceal my presence, I was only seen when I walked closer to the River Street side of the rooftop,” I said. “Other than that, unless I went close to the roof’s edge like the state police, I doubt I would have been noticed.”

  “And if you were crouching down,” Carrie added, “maybe wearing dark clothes, would you have been noticed even from the River Street side?”

  “Probably not.”

  Though the memory of it did bring back Ken’s smile when he saw me on the roof. Was he amused to see someone standing there, trying to maneuver her way around on a pile of newly fallen snow? Or did he realize I was investigating the shooting?

  “So bring this to Jesse and see what he can do with it,” Susanne said. She got disapproving looks from the rest of us, especially Natalie, but she held her ground. “We’re talking about a pretty sophisticated killer. This is someone who planned a big, middle of the day, middle of the street, shooting without getting caught. This is out of our league.”

  Susanne joined in our investigations, but like Eleanor, only with reluctance, and only, I suspected, because talking about murder had become such a big part of our quilt meetings. I’m sure, given the option of a vote, she would have lobbied for a return to discussions of normal quilt-related things: fabric storage, the newest trends in design, chocolate, and who in town was starting a new romance.

  Which reminded me, I needed to bring up Dru and Charlie when the group met next—if the group met again. Eleanor and I still hadn’t discussed what she planned to do with the shop while she and Oliver were away.

  “Susanne’s right about it being sophisticated,” I reluctantly agreed. “This is someone who pulled off a murder in front of the police chief’s house, and a home invasion to boot. Then planned ahead to create a diversion for a shooting that served as a warning for that same police chief.”

  “Or you,” Natalie corrected me, “because you saw something when you went to Jesse’s house the night of the murder.”

  “That makes no sense.” Susanne jumped in.

  “What makes no sense?” I asked.

  She narrowed her eyes, and smiled. “I’ll tell you if you promise to take this to Jesse.”

  “Mom!” Natalie protested.

  “I’m serious. It’s okay to look things up on the Internet or discuss possibilities of who might have killed whom. That’s not dangerous.”

  “We’ve done more than that,” Natalie stepped in again.

  “Fine, maybe we have. But we’ve always had Jesse to do the actual police work. Nell has shared our findings with him almost every time.”

  The operative word there being almost, but she was right. “I promise,” I said. “Tell me what doesn’t make sense.”

  Susanne took a deep breath and looked at all of us separately as she spoke. “If the killer took the starter out of Dru’s car the night before, before he’d even committed the murder, then how would he know that Nell would happen to walk past and see Roger sitting in the car? How do we know the killer was even in the car when Nell walked past?”

  We each sat back and went over her words in our heads. She had a point.

  “So maybe the killer didn’t know,” Natalie said. “But then why seem to target Someday?”

  There was no arguing that all four targets—the sign, the streetlamps on either side of the shop, and Jesse’s patrol car parked right out front—seemed to be a warning specifically directed at the quilt store. But if it wasn’t a message for me, then it had to be a message to Jesse about me.

  “So either the killer knew who I was before the murder took place,” I said, “or he found out once he arrived in town. If he was following Roger . . .”

  Carrie gasped. “I told Roger that Jesse’s girlfriend worked at the quilt shop. Do you think it’s possible the killer overheard? I don’t remember if there were people in here I didn’t know. Aside from Roger, I mean. And Rich waits on about half the customers. . . .”

  “Maybe Rich will remember. . . .” Natalie started to say, then she laughed. “Forget it. Unless the killer is a cute eighteen-year-old girl he won’t remember.”

  “Don’t be too hard on him,” Carrie said. “I don’t always pay a lot of attention if the person doesn’t stand out, like Roger did by staring across to Someday for so long.”

  “But if Carrie’s right and the killer did overhear, half the town would have identified you as that person, Nell,” Natalie said. “Look at all the information Bob Marshall has put together on you. The killer could have done the same.”

  “Assuming the killer isn’t Bob Marshall,” I said.

  Susanne wrapped her cardigan tighter. It wasn’t cold inside of Jitters, but she felt a chill. “So even if you weren’t the target before Roger’s murder, you might be now.”

  Susanne was right again.

  CHAPTER 37

  “I’ll call Jesse,” I said. “Maybe we can have a quiet moment together and talk. I’ll tell him everything I’ve found out and we’ll go from there.”

  I wasn’t sure Jesse would be open to my theories. This wasn’t like other times I’d pitched in on a case. Jesse was hiding something from me. I knew it in my gut, but I just didn’t want to share it with the rest of the group. They loved him nearly as much as I did. My small nagging doubts were difficult enough; I couldn’t bear the idea that my friends would feel them, too.

  Carrie was the first to pull away from our tight circle. She looked around at the new customers that were coming into the shop, lining up for a midmorning pick-me-up of caffeine and sugar. “I only have a few more minutes before I have to relieve Rich, and you do realize the bachelorette party is in five days. Have we done anything for it?”

  Natalie grabbed her cell phone. “If we’re going to huddle on that subject, we need Bernie and Maggie. From what I understand, Bernie has very specific ideas on what we should do.”

  I went to the counter to refill my coffee. Natalie made some suggestion for the party, which left Susanne looking s
hocked and Carrie laughing hysterically. I didn’t want to know.

  Greg had the same need for a caffeine fix that I did. Rich was waiting on him, pouring a strong black coffee while Greg looked through the display case at the dozens of scones, donuts, coffee cake squares, and giant cookies. While he picked out just the right sugary snack, I went behind the counter and refilled my own cup. In Jitters, much like in Someday Quilts, when it was busy, friends sometimes helped themselves and settled up on the honor system.

  “Cold day out there,” Greg said, a little louder than his normal voice.

  “It’s just about this time of year when I wonder how long ’til spring.”

  “That’s true for me, too.” He jerked his head slightly. It took me a moment to realize it was a signal. He walked toward the back door and I followed.

  “Everything okay with Jesse?” he asked.

  “Yeah. He said he went for a drive and lost cell service.”

  He clenched his jaw a little, nodded a bit too much. “I’m glad it worked out. And Nell, you can call me anytime. Not that Jesse will be MIA again.”

  “No, hopefully not. And thank you for last night. I don’t think I can say enough how glad I was that you picked up your phone.”

  “Has Bob Marshall given you any more trouble?”

  I told him about my walk into town, about Ken Tremayne, and about our encounter with Bob. I didn’t tell him about my switch in theory from two killers to one. I figured I’d save that for Jesse.

  “Ken Tremayne lost his law license six months ago,” Greg said. “I did a background check. Apparently there’s some malpractice suit against him.”

  “What about?”

  “Nothing to do with Roger or the case. Just some guy who didn’t like his representation. He filed some kind of complaint, and it cost Tremayne his license, and now there’s a lawsuit.”

  “Why did you look in the first place?”