Lenore felt part of the problem was bad placement. She should be seated next to the check-out table, where people had to stand and wait while their orders were rung up. There, having nothing else to do, they’d take a closer look at the model. Then they would, perhaps, see past the snagged fabric and inadequate finishing to the clever design.
Or maybe it wouldn’t help. Mr. Moore should know his business; maybe he looked at her model and just plumped her down here to sink or swim.
Lenore needed a big success here at the Market. The pattern deserved it, and good sales would mean they’d buy her next pattern, too. Her husband Cody stayed on as credit manager at Harley-Davidson because the pay was good and they offered great benefits, but the work was not challenging and he often talked of starting his own accounting firm. Now that Mike and Alyssa were both in school, her husband—not unjustifiably—wanted her to share the burden and find a full-time job. But if this new pattern led to regular work as a designer for Bewitching Stitches, her income could easily go higher than what she could earn as a full-time cashier at Pik n’ Save.
Maybe she should have canceled her appearance in Nashville, and just taken a chance with Bewitching Stitches’ catalog presentation. No, making a personal appearance—Meet The Designer!—was important, despite the cost of travel.
Well, then, maybe she should have left the crappy model at home. No, the pattern was complex and difficult, and it needed a model. A photograph or drawing wouldn’t do. But this model . . . It was tooth-grindingly awful to have to put this thing on display. Oh, there had been a few customers who could see past the flaws, but most were just coming in long enough to buy patterns by known designers, and would only have paused if something brilliant caught their eye. Something like the properly finished model Belle had promised Lenore.
There ought to be a special place in hell for people who deliberately smash the dreams of others, thought Lenore savagely. And Belle can’t get there any too soon.
Another customer came in, glanced very briefly at Lenore and her model, then turned away. It was a rejection so clear Lenore nearly cried out in protest. But she stuffed it down, though the effort deepened her scowl.
Then her anger flared up even brighter at the injustice of it all. Wouldn’t it be great to go find Belle? Lenore had seen her at breakfast, filling a plate with scrambled eggs in the buffet line, laughing and talking just as if she were not some kind of weird monster. Cherry wasn’t with her. Lenore thought about that. Was the partnership in trouble? There was certainly some tension between Belle and Cherry. Lenore recalled the sudden silence that fell when she came in a week ago, and, once before that, Cherry turning away too late to hide her angry face. Probably Belle’s fault. No, undoubtedly Belle’s fault! The witch.
And here was Belle in Nashville, in easy reach. All by herself, Cherry wasn’t with her.
But how to get away? Lenore, overwhelmed by a desire to escape, reached hastily for the Styrofoam cup of coffee on the little table. Her grip was awkward as she lifted it. She tried to rearrange her grasp without putting it down and managed to flip it into her lap.
Hot!
She jumped to her feet with a hiss, sending the cup bounding across the room and flipping brown liquid from her skirt all over the table. The patterns were in plastic bags—except the top one, which was for customers to peruse. And the model. The pattern was spattered—but the model was drenched.
Lenore gave a wordless yell and ran from the suite.
Saturday, December 15, 8:58 A.M.
Eve Suttle’s employer said, in her charming Georgia accent, “You all are better at samplers than I am; how about you buy them? Here’s your copy of my credit card. Please, please try not to spend more than two hundred on sampler patterns.”
“Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Entwhistle.” Eve had grown up in Savannah, but had long ago lost her accent, if not her manners. She wasn’t sure how to go about regaining it, or if she should. Would it be reclaiming her roots or mocking them to deliberately slow her words?
She wasn’t going to have any problem limiting her purchases. Belle was here, Eve knew because she had asked at the front desk last night and when the woman said yes, Eve had left a note telling Belle when and where to meet her.
That meeting time was now in less than an hour; Eve was anxious to be on her way so she could do enough shopping to satisfy Mrs. Entwhistle and still make the meeting. She had not, of course, told anyone about it. She took the card and stowed it in an inner pocket of her purse, then checked her watch.
“There’s someone here with a sampler shaped like a Christmas tree, see if you can find it,” Mrs. Entwhistle said.
“Okay.” It was ten after nine.
“Eve.”
“Okay.”
“Eve!”
“What?” Had she missed something? Eve was anxious not to give away any hint that she was less than focused on buying product for Silver Threads. “I’m sorry, I think I’m not awake yet.”
“See if you can find that sampler shaped like a Christmas tree. I can’t remember who is sponsoring her.”
“Oh, that. I know the designer; she’s Lenore King from Milwaukee. She used to come into that store I worked at up there, to show the owner parts of her design. What I saw of it looked really great, but I never saw the whole pattern. I’ll look for her, and if her model’s good, I’ll be sure to buy a couple of patterns.”
“If it’s really good, buy half a dozen. All right, we’re set. See you at lunch.”
It was nearly time for the meeting when Eve passed through the Bewitching Stitches suite. Lenore King wasn’t there, and her model looked as if someone had spilled something on it, cocoa or coffee. How awful, because Belle charged the earth for finishing. But wait, this model had problems besides the stains. This couldn’t have been properly finished! How could Lenore put this out where people could see it? Sales of the piece must be suffering because the model looked so bad.
Eve stooped for a closer look. Actually, it was a really clever design—and they were coffee stains, she could smell it. She knew several people who would love to stitch something as beautiful—and difficult—as this, including herself.
She straightened. “Is this Lenore King’s design?” she asked.
A man behind a little table said, “Yes. And that’s only her working model. The real model wasn’t ready on time for the Market, I guess because we got moved up two months.”
Eve knew Lenore had been stitching a showcase model of this pattern months ago; there had been plenty of time to get it finished by mid-December. So it wasn’t hard to guess whose fault it was that the real model wasn’t here.
Eve hid her anger at this further evidence of perfidy and looked around. “Where’s Lenore?” she asked.
“She went to change her skirt. She upended a whole cup of coffee on herself,” said the man, who was short and sporting a curly dark beard. “Do you know her?”
“I used to, back when I lived in Milwaukee. She was always coming up with nice sampler patterns, but this was her masterpiece. I remember how hard she was working on it. And if you give it a good look, you can see that it turned out really beautiful!” Eve said that last sentence nice and loud so other customers could hear her, and added, just as loudly, “I want six patterns of this beautiful Christmas tree sampler, please!”
She quickly chose a few other patterns so long as she was there, then hurried off to her ten o’clock appointment with Belle.
Saturday, December 15, 9:40 A.M.
Lenore was crying in fury and frustration as she shoved her door card into the lock on the ninth floor. She stripped off her beautiful silk skirt and panty hose in the bathroom and wiped her bare legs with a washcloth soaked in cold water. The skin was only a little red and there were no blisters, but her hands trembled with aftershock.
And when she looked in the mirror, she was further discouraged at her awful face. Her eye makeup was smudged and her nose and eyes were red. Her hair was hanging crazily—she had run her finger
s through it on the elevator. People must have been staring at her, crying and dripping coffee and wiping her hands in her hair.
This was impossible. She couldn’t go back down to Mr. Moore’s suite. And why should she? He would have thrown the ruined model away by this point, surely. She couldn’t sit there beside a stack of patterns with no model. And looking like the crack of doom, she added, again noting the ruins in the mirror.
She couldn’t go home. No one could leave the hotel, the blizzard had all the streets and roads closed. What was she going to do for the rest of the show?
First of all, she closed the plug in the bathtub, put her stained skirt and panty hose in, and covered them with cold water. The stains hadn’t set, maybe they could be rinsed out. Then she washed the smeared makeup off her face, let down the rest of her hair and combed it out, and changed into jeans and a chambray shirt. Now she looked presentable and, except for the glow of fury in her eyes, totally different from the sullen artisan who had sat in Bewitching Stitches.
It was ten after ten when she decided to go look for Belle.
Ten
Saturday, December 15, 12:55 P.M.
The police hadn’t come yet, so Belle’s body still lay where it had fallen near the foot of the steps. It was surrounded now by screens made of seven-foot-tall stainless steel frames filled with brown cloth. A gray-haired woman in black sweats and silver lamé walking shoes sat on a folding chair outside one of the screens, eating soup and crackers from a bowl sitting on a plate. Everyone knew what the screens hid and she guarded, but knowing is not the same as experiencing. The atrium was full of only slightly subdued voices talking and even laughing.
The hotel had set up a big, round table at the other end of the atrium, offering a buffet-style lunch of two kinds of soup plus chili, breads and crackers, and a salad bar. The restaurant in the far corner was open, with a full menu, and the bar was serving hamburgers, hot dogs, and cold sandwiches. Most of the glass-topped tables and chairs had been moved toward the center to make room for the buffet table. The ones nearest the buffet were thickly crowded, but diners thinned out the closer they were to the screens—though even the nearest was a dozen yards away.
“Why didn’t they set up in the big ballroom?” asked the person ahead of Betsy in the buffet line, dipping into the chili pot.
“Because there are people camped in the big ballroom,” said the person ahead of her. “And the small one. People who were supposed to check out this morning, but who can’t get away because the airport’s closed. Not that they could get to the airport, even if it was open,” she added, lifting and tipping the metal bin that held the last of the grated cheese over her bowl. Betsy sighed. She would have liked some cheese on her own chili.
Since it was impossible to leave the hotel, everyone was eating in today, and extra chairs were brought from the smaller meeting rooms. And awful as it was to eat in the presence of death, people didn’t want to be alone, so the bar and restaurant were packed and all the tables in the atrium were occupied, even the unpopular ones. Those who managed to get a place at a table near the buffet found they could quite literally rub elbows with their fellow diners.
Betsy stood bemused; she had been among the last to file past the big round table with its picked-over greens and nearly emptied dressing bins. She’d given up her desire for a salad, and now, with a bowl of cheeseless chili and a glass of milk on her tray, she couldn’t see a place to sit down. Well, she could have crowded in with the four oblivious people at the table over there, but not if there were any alternative.
Then she saw Godwin stand up and wave at her from a tiny round table meant for two that had Jill, another woman, and two other men sitting at it. Nevertheless, he gestured again for her to come over, pointing at an empty chair set a little to one side. As she approached, slowly and doubtfully, the others moved their chairs back, enlarging their circle to make room for her, though it meant they had to reach well forward to spoon or fork up a bite of their meals.
She smiled her apologies and said, “Thank you for making room.” She sat, put her bowl on the table, and began to crumble her crackers inside the packet before opening it and sprinkling them over her chili.
Godwin said, “I don’t know why people won’t take their food up to their rooms. This place is packed!”
“If you’re feeling crowded, why don’t you go up?” asked Jill, giving him one of her coolest looks.
“I don’t know.” He put his fork down and looked as if he were about to take her suggestion, but changed his mind. “Because I don’t want to. What happened was so horrible, I don’t want to be alone.”
“See?” said Jill.
“Me, too,” said Betsy. “It’s awful to be so near . . . her, but I feel like I need to be around lots of people.”
“Besides,” said Godwin, “there’s people here you want to talk to. When you’re shopping, you’re shopping. When you’re eating lunch, you get to catch up with old friends.” He looked around at the others at his table. “I’m Godwin DuLac, by the way. That’s Betsy Devonshire, my boss, who owns Crewel World in Excelsior, Minnesota.”
A small but very handsome man with dark hair and brown eyes sat across from Godwin. He was holding his turkey club sandwich in his hand to give others room on the table.
“I’m Terrence Nolan, I design for Dimples,” he said. “I’m with you on not wanting to be alone.”
“No, you are Dimples,” Godwin said, and smiled to show his own dimple and waved his eyelashes at Terrence.
Terrence waved back, he even added a wink, and Godwin began to glow. With his lover John hundreds of miles away, Godwin was like a horse let loose after a month in the barn. A mere dead body wasn’t going to stop him flirting.
Betsy said to Terrence, “I like your birds, especially Rex and Spike, the kingfishers; and I love the Santa heads. You make him look like a real person, kind of sad but kind. Not that I’ve stitched them,” she added hastily, “but the models hanging on the wall of my shop sell a lot of your patterns.”
“You need the eyes and fingers of a ten-year-old to stitch some of those patterns,” agreed a good-looking man in a black sport coat and open-collar green shirt. He had a strong accent that put him from somewhere near New Jersey. His head was shaved entirely, an attempt to disguise his male pattern baldness, but the bald spot was outlined in a gray shadow. He touched his temple in a kind of salute. “I’m Harry Mason, I own Hal’s Floss and Fabric store in Philadelphia.”
“You and your wife?” asked Godwin, hoping not and prepared to flirt in that direction, too.
“No,” replied Harry, then dashed Godwin’s hopes by continuing, “My wife is an attorney. I was an architect until I broke both legs in a car accident and was laid up for a long time. A nurse brought me a counted cross-stitch kit. I liked it so much that I asked for another, and by the time I was up and around I was hooked.”
He looked to one side and asked in a southern accent, “How bad was you hooked, boy?” and replied in his Philadelphia accent, “So badly that I quit my job with Wolfe, Barnes, and Kirkwood to start Hal’s Floss and Fabric, Inc. That was four years ago; and my goal in life is to show men how needlework can save your life, even your soul. It’s not expensive, it’s not hard to get started, and you never run out of things to learn about it. Plus, you can enter it in competitions.” He looked away and said in that southern voice, “But Ah don’ lahk competitions!” And went on in his normal voice, “Or not.”
Godwin giggled and said, “Do you often talk to yourself?”
Harry raised his eyebrows and said with earnest curiosity, “Never! Why do you ask?”
Godwin laughed again and said, “Never mind, forget it. How’s your business doing?”
“Last year the store met expenses and this year I was going to show a profit until I had to come here in December and add three thousand dollars to inventory.”
Betsy said, “Don’t open the bags.”
“Huh?”
She explained th
e ploy of storing the purchases unopened until after the first of the new year.
Harry nodded, smiling. “I guess I’ll be in the black after all. Thank you.”
“I’m Lenore King, and I love those Professor Fizzby patterns of yours, Mr. Nolan,” said a tall, very slender woman of perhaps forty summers. She wore a loose-fitting blue chambray shirt that matched her eyes, and her dark brown hair was pulled back and fastened with a scrunchie at the nape of her neck. Her lips were smiling, but not her eyes.
“Thanks,” said Terrence carelessly.
“Give her praise; it’s due,” said Betsy, “this is the designer of that sampler Christmas tree Bewitching Stitches is selling.”
Terrence looked at her with more respect. “I saw that,” he said. “Someone told me about it and I went for a look. Samplers aren’t my thing, but that is downright ingenious.”
She blushed and crumbled the fragment of dinner roll into crumbs with her long fingers.
“You’re very kind,” she muttered. “Especially since the model is such a mess.”
Godwin said, “What suite is Bewitching Stitches in? I’d like to take a look at it.”
Betsy said, “Suite five eighteen. Go look if you like, but I’ve already bought four copies of the pattern.” She smiled and added, “I made a note to warn my customers that it needs careful, professional finishing.”
Lenore’s blush deepened, and she pinched the last crumbs between her fingers so hard her fingernails turned white. She said, “Don’t bother. The model’s probably been thrown away. I spilled coffee all over it a while ago.”
“Oh, too bad!” said Godwin.
“It’s all right, it wasn’t exactly a showpiece. I didn’t get my good model in time for Nashville. I had to bring the working piece, all crooked and full of loose threads. It’s affecting sales, and I’m afraid Bewitching Stitches isn’t going to buy any more of my work.”
Crewel Yule Page 7