The Double Cross

by Clare O'Donohue

  On my way back to the inn, I got a little lost. I’m no Girl Scout, and one tree looks pretty much the same as the other, so it wasn’t difficult. At one point I thought I was taking a shortcut but I ended up in an unfamiliar area. There was another hiking path that I followed for a while. I could see a house in the distance, and I wondered if it was Pete’s, but I wasn’t sure if I had been walking toward his house or in another direction entirely. Whoever the house belonged to, I reasoned, they would probably know the way back to the Patchwork Bed-and-Breakfast, so I started toward it.

  As I walked I saw an open basket near a tree. There was no one around, so I went over and checked it out. A half-empty bottle of wine, a few glasses, and the bones of what had probably been a chicken leg were lying on the ground nearby. Whatever food had been in the basket was pretty much eaten by animals. It might have been the one Bernie used, making it another piece of missed evidence. I wasn’t going to help McIntyre with anything that might strengthen his case against Bernie, so I left it there and walked on.

  Then I heard a shot. I gasped and whirled around.

  “I could have blown your head off,” Frank said to me. “What are you doing in the woods?”

  “Me?” I yelled back. “Shouldn’t you be with your wife?”

  “I’m looking for found objects for my quilt, just in case we have class today.”

  “With a gun?”

  He shrugged. “I keep it in my car. I’m no good sitting around being sad, and that is what the women will do today, so I thought I could bag a deer.”

  As Frank was talking, I stared at this gun. He wasn’t exactly pointing it at me, but he wasn’t pointing toward the ground either.

  “I should get back,” I said.

  Frank looked at his gun. “This make you nervous?”

  “I just should get back.”

  He grabbed my arm. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  I pulled back anyway and was prepared to run, but Frank handed me the gun.

  “Hold the butt under your right arm, just under your armpit, and rest your left hand under the rifle and your right hand on the trigger. Aim it toward that tree over there.” He pointed toward a tree about thirty feet away.

  I did as I was told.

  “Look through the sight.”

  I did. “It seems closer,” I said.

  “Makes it easier to hit your mark,” he said. “Now pull the trigger.”

  I did. And as I did, I fell back on the ground.

  “Sorry. I should have mentioned that. You need to have solid footing if you’re going to shoot a big gun like that.”

  I handed him back the gun and walked toward my target. Sure enough, there was a hole in the tree trunk just where I had aimed.

  “It’s important to have a healthy respect for a weapon,” he said, “not a fear of it.”

  I suppose that was true enough, but it was the way he said it that made me shudder. I looked back at the tree trunk, and the hole I’d just put into it, and wondered if it had been that easy to shoot George.

  CHAPTER 22

  There was a lot of activity when I returned to the house. A pickup truck with paint cans and rollers in the back was parked outside. Several cars I didn’t recognize were parked behind it.

  As I was about to go into the house, Pete walked out to the truck and grabbed a paint can.

  “This morning Rita said that she and George dreamed of fixing this place up and now she was afraid that dream would die,” he told me. “So Helen and I and the other ladies, the twins, called a few neighbors and we’re going to get started.”

  “That’s incredibly nice of you.”

  “As much as we enjoyed Susanne’s class, we figured it would be better to do something for Rita. She insisted we all stay, and all of you stay. She seemed to want activity at the inn, so we’re giving her plenty of that.”

  “I should find my grandmother and tell her.”

  He smiled. “It was her idea.”

  I could hear voices inside the shop before I’d even opened the door. When I did, Eleanor, Susanne, and Bernie were standing at a large metal machine, turning a handle. It didn’t seem nearly as exciting to me as it did to them.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Nell, look at this. It’s a die cutter for quilts,” Eleanor said.

  She showed me a piece of foam-backed wood. It looked like a giant rubber stamp, except that instead of images embossed on the foam, there were squares cut into it. She put the die on a metal tray and covered it with a layer of fabric, then put a piece of plastic over that and rolled the whole thing through the fabric cutter. She lifted up the plastic to reveal a dozen perfectly cut two-inch squares.

  “Cool, huh?” she said. “You can cut ten layers of fabric at a time.”

  I had to agree. “It would make pretty fast work for a quilt that needed lots of squares.”

  “Oh, there are lots of other shapes.” Eleanor sounded like an old pro. “I’m just demonstrating this one for you. I don’t know how I lived without it. I can cut a whole quilt in ten minutes.”

  I laughed. “This is one of those hip gadgets that Rita talked about, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not anti-gadget. I just think it takes a little more than the latest tools to be a quilter.”

  “So I get to play with it?” I asked. “And the long-arm machine?”

  Eleanor looked back at the large quilting machine and table that took up nearly half the shop. “I suppose it’s worth a try.”

  “Pete told me that you suggested helping Rita fix up the inn. So what are you guys doing hiding in here when there’s painting to be done?”

  “Hiding?” Susanne laughed. “We’ve dug into the fabrics Rita bought and made three quilt tops already.” She held up a top made completely with squares in soothing blues and greens. “We’re going to make a different quilt for every bed at the inn.”

  “And a few to hang on the wall,” Bernie added. “Cheer up the place once it’s painted.”

  Not to be left out, I uncovered the long-arm machine, and Bernie and I carefully read the instructions, then crossed our fingers and pinned one of the quilt tops to the bracers.

  A long-arm sewing machine is like a traditional quilt frame in many ways, with the quilt layered with the batting and backing, pinned at the edges, and then rolled up to allow for about eighteen inches of quilting space at a time. The difference, of course, is that a sewing machine makes the work much faster than the hand sewing done on a traditional frame. Long arms have a large throat, which is the space between the needle and the arm of the machine, and instead of quilting from the side of the machine you quilt from the front. The selling point is that quilters no longer have to roll, or shove, large quilts through their machines and can therefore quilt them faster and even be more creative. As I looked at the machine, it looked easy, and the instructions made it seem easy, but I was a bit intimidated.

  I grabbed the handles, which looked like bull horns coming out on either side, and with Bernie reading the instructions, I slowly moved the machine. First I zigzagged along the edges to secure them. Then I stitched in the ditch, a quilter’s term for quilting along the sewing lines. It doesn’t add much to the design of the quilt, but it does secure the three layers together and is the easiest way I’ve found to quilt in a hurry.

  “This is pretty easy,” I said, excited to have taken to it so quickly.

  I got more adventurous as I quilted, making free-motion circles on the second quilt and simple flowers on the third. I was having fun.

  Within a few hours, we had made five quilt tops and three finished quilts. Though they were all simple in design, they were beautiful. I hoped it would bring Rita some comfort to see that we were all trying to help, but even if it didn’t, it felt good to see Bernie happy and confident, at least for the moment.

  I’d forgotten about what was going on outside the shop, but when I looked up, I realized that we had not been forgotten.

  Rita was at the door. “What’s goin
g on in here?”

  She looked fragile, but when the three of us rushed over to suggest she sit down, she waved us off.

  “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself,” she said briskly. “I’m just trying to understand what everyone is doing.”

  “Would you rather we stopped?” I asked. “We don’t want to disturb you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to stop. I asked what you were doing.”

  I watched Bernie as she took a deep breath then seemed to make a decision. She walked over to her childhood friend and gave her a hug.

  “I’m sorry about George.”

  Rita seemed more shocked by the display than anything. “It’s very sad,” Rita muttered. She moved past Bernie to Eleanor. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re making quilts for the inn. If you’re going to cater to quilters, then you should have quilts on the beds and a few on the walls. Plus you’ll need samples in the shop.”

  “You’re making them for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Rita blinked slowly. She looked around. “I was thinking about expanding the place to include other hobbies. Knitting, doll making, maybe ceramics. I could go into town and make some inquires about getting that started.”

  “Now?” I asked, a little too loudly. I pulled back a little on the tone of my voice. “Don’t you want to concentrate on funeral arrangements?”

  Rita looked at me, a slightly annoyed expression on her face, as though I didn’t have my priorities straight. “It’s really more important than ever that we get this place up and running.”

  Eleanor stepped forward. “I’m sure it’s what George would have wanted . . . ,” she started.

  “It’s what I want,” Rita interrupted her. “I appreciate the work you’re doing. Can you make ten quilts? I think I’ll need ten.”

  And with that she walked out of the shop.

  “I am sorry about her husband. I really am,” Susanne said. “But that woman is just unpleasant.”

  “She certainly has an interesting way of mourning,” my grandmother agreed.

  I would have commented, but something caught my eye near the back of the shop. There was an open box of seam rippers dumped on a cutting table a few feet from the front door. There must have been a hundred of them. And every one was exactly the same: a little metal hook with a medium blue plastic handle.

  I looked for Bernie, back at the long-arm machine, quietly working on the next quilt. I didn’t want to share with her what I had found in the woods, because talk of her relationship with George seemed to make her defensive. But I felt better. These seam rippers meant that anyone with access to the quilt shop, and that could pretty much mean anyone, since Rita didn’t seem to lock the door, could have dropped that tool near the crime scene, either by accident or on purpose.

  Rita’s visit and the seam rippers had brought the murder back to the forefront. Even though we were now, I suppose, directed to make ten quilts, I left the work to the others and walked out of the shop, hoping to find out who else might have left a seam ripper in the woods.

  CHAPTER 23

  As I walked out into the daylight, I saw McIntyre and Jesse talking with Fred. The three men seemed engaged in a pretty serious conversation, and when I came closer, I got a stern look from Jesse. It was clear that I was not welcome to join them. I walked away. If we were going to be on the same side in this investigation, I had to trust that Jesse would share the information with me as soon as he could. Instead I walked into the classroom to see if there was a chance I could find any clues the students had left behind.

  On a back table were flowers and cards that had been brought by members of the community to offer their condolences to Rita. The classroom was empty, and most of the students seemed to have cleaned up after themselves at the end of yesterday’s class. Only some fabrics, a packet of needles, and a handful of seam rippers had been left out on the tables, and it was hard to tell who their owners were.

  I found myself drifting toward the front of the classroom, where the group’s first quilts were displayed. Each student had made something unique, and it was easy to see who had made which quilt. Helen’s was an orderly and nearly literal translation of a tree, with a trunk of brown corduroy and pieces of green velvet cut into dozens of tiny leaves. It was beautiful but restrained and careful. If I were judging Helen by her quilt, I’d say she didn’t like to take any chances. Frank’s quilt, on the other hand, was a mess. I doubt it had been his intention to make it abstract, but it had sort of turned out that way. It was a whirl of fabrics and trim and small metal buttons. He’d used the computer to print the words MY WORLD and fused them to the top. There was none of the charm he had tried to display on the first day. This quilt was all force. It must be hard for Helen to have her orderly world connected to his chaos.

  I walked closer to the next quilt to see the details. It had to be Pete’s, I decided. He’d used the sky fabrics we’d picked out together and added so many trees that they nearly blocked out the light. There was a dark circle in the corner, made of deep brown silk with a spray of brightly colored ribbons coming from it.

  “You like it?”

  I turned to see Pete at the entrance of the classroom.

  “I do,” I said. “Are these flowers?”

  He blushed a little. “It’s supposed to mean that even in the darkest places good things can grow.”

  “Well, it does,” I said. “It’s nice.”

  “It’s not as cool as her quilt.” He nodded toward one of the twins.

  I looked at the quilt next to Pete’s and saw a quilt that was almost black, with small blue triangles around the edges. It was as strange and inexplicable as the woman herself. But as I got closer, my nose almost touching the quilt, I realized that it was an extreme close-up of a crow, almost blocking out the sky behind it. The word PROMISES written over and over and over, in tiny lettering, covered each wing completely. In tiny letters in the corner was the maker’s name: Alysse. I stepped back.

  “That’s really interesting. I wonder what it means.”

  “I was thinking broken engagement,” Pete offered.

  “Probably. This must be Alice’s quilt,” I said about the one next to it.

  It was also a close-up image, this time of a leaf, with small green beads decorating the edges. A considerably lighter and happier image.

  I turned away from the quilts. “How’s the remodeling going?”

  Pete smiled. “We’ve got the living room painted and we’re working on the dining room. Helen and the twins have made lunch, if you’re hungry. I told your grandmother and the others.”

  “And you were looking for me?”

  “You always seem to be off on your own somewhere.”

  “Do I?” I’d thought I spent most of my time with the group, but maybe he was right. I did tend to wander off.

  “I hear you like looking into things,” he said. “Like what happened to George.”

  “I want to see justice, same as everybody else.”

  He nodded. “I just think a nice lady like you would rather help with the quilting than get involved in something as messy as someone’s murder. Especially with your friend Jesse and Chief McIntyre around.”

  “I like to help.” I pointed to a paint stain on his shirt. “Just like you.”

  I didn’t want to get into a discussion about some of Pete’s rather old-fashioned ideas about what women and men should do with their time, not unless it had something to do with the murder.

  With me in the lead, Pete and I passed Jesse and the others, who were still in conversation. We walked into the inn, and it was obvious that in just a few hours a lot of work had been done. The textured wallpaper in the entryway had been primed; the furniture in the living room was still covered, but the walls had gone from a drab and dirty white to a warm taupe; and as I entered the dining room, I saw that a coat of a light moss green had already been applied to three of the walls. Even though the room was under construction, a few people from to
wn, Alice and Alysse, Bernie, Susanne, and my grandmother were eating and a buffet-style lunch had been set up along the unpainted wall. I grabbed a plate of fried chicken and potato salad, and sat across from the twins.

  “I was just in the classroom,” I said. “I really like your quilts. The basic idea is the same—you know, the extreme close-up of an object—but you’ve taken them in such different directions.”

  “Alysse’s is very dark,” Alice said. “She thinks she’s profound. I think it’s unhealthy. Especially now.”

  It was an unexpected and welcome opening. “With George dead, you mean.”

  “Such a terrible shame,” Alysse said. “A good man cut down in his prime. A dear person. I’ll miss him.”

  “You were friends? I didn’t know that.”

  Alysse’s face whitened. “Not friends. But since we started the class, we saw him around.”

  “So you didn’t know him?”

  “No,” her sister said quickly.

  “So how did you find out about the class? The others are all friends of the Olnhausens.”

  “We met Rita at a church function. She mentioned the class and so we came.”

  “Which church?”

  “The one in town,” Alysse said. “I’m sorry, but I promised Helen I would help with dessert. We made chocolate cake.”

  “Of course.”

  Both sisters got up from the table and left me sitting alone. I could see Susanne trying to catch my eye so I motioned to her, and she came to sit with me.

  “How’s it going?” I whispered to her. “Any admissions of guilt during lunch?”

  Susanne grimaced. “I think Helen wants to talk. She’s been hiding in the kitchen this whole time, but I don’t think I’m good at interrogating, especially when I’m trying not to seem like I’m interrogating. You go and see what you can find out.”

  Once I saw the twins return, with chocolate cake and plates, I headed toward the kitchen where Helen was washing dishes.