Elm Creek Quilts [06] The Master Quilter

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “What is it?” asked Mary Beth, dubious. She rarely read more of the news pages than the headlines; the national stories were always so depressing and the world news inscrutable. Sometimes she delved into the local news if someone she knew was mentioned, or read the opinion pages if someone had written in about one of her pet causes, but usually she stuck to the features.

  In reply, Roger leaned over and tapped a column at the top of the page. Mary Beth frowned and scanned the weekly police report. “What?” Then she saw it: One week ago, Grandma’s Attic had been robbed and vandalized.

  Why had she not heard this before? Bonnie was no longer a member of the guild, but this was relevant to the Waterford quilting community, and Mary Beth was the center of the Waterford quilting community. She should have been told.

  “I heard it was a real mess,” Brent offered.

  “Well, this is the first I’ve heard of it.” Mary Beth slid the paper back to her husband. “Why on earth would you assume this would make me happy?”

  He feigned innocence. “Bonnie Markham’s one of those Elm Creek people, right?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’d celebrate her misfortune.” She frowned when her husband and son exchanged a look of surprise. Honestly. What kind of person did they think she was?

  “You never shop there,” said Brent. “You’re always talking about how much you hate them.”

  “And now they’ll be too busy to interfere with your quilt guild,” added Roger.

  “And that quilt for old Mrs. Compson. Now they won’t be able to bother you about that stupid quilt anymore.”

  There was that. Still, Bonnie was the least offensive of the Elm Creekers, and Mary Beth found it unsettling that the criminals had targeted a quilt shop. Why a quilt shop, when robbers usually focused on convenience stores and gas stations? It was unnatural, a strike at the heartland, at home and family and all that quilting represented.

  Brent set aside the sports section and rose. On his way to the kitchen with his cereal bowl and juice glass, he said, “I bet Mrs. Sonnenberg is really upset.”

  Mary Beth considered. “I imagine you’re right,” she said, and did not try to keep the satisfaction from her voice.

  A week after the claims adjuster’s visit, Bonnie received the written report from the insurance company. Due to the suspicious nature of the crime, they were withholding payment until such time as the authorities could determine an outside party was responsible for the alleged burglary.

  Immediately Bonnie phoned the agent who had toured the shop, too shocked for tears. “I don’t understand,” she told him, although she understood all too well. “Do you mean I won’t get anything?”

  “I’m truly very sorry,” he said. “If it makes any difference, I did recommend you for full coverage, but the board is strongly influenced by police reports.”

  “But the police didn’t conclude it was an inside job,” she said. “They said it was inconclusive.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s enough to warrant this decision.”

  “Then why have I been paying all these premiums all these years?” Bonnie heard the shrillness in her words and gulped air. She must stay calm. “Please. I didn’t destroy my own shop. If that were true, why would I want to rebuild so badly? Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  “You can file an appeal.”

  She held back a sob. “How?”

  She took notes as he described the process, but even before she hung up she realized that even if the board reversed its decision, there was no way, no way she would receive the payment in time to save Grandma’s Attic.

  Gwen was shocked to discover that Summer had moved out of Jeremy’s apartment. She was less surprised that her daughter had moved into a suite on the second floor of Elm Creek Manor instead of choosing her old bedroom at home.

  “Can we talk about this?” she asked one night after the evening program, when Summer headed for the grand oak staircase in the front foyer instead of the back door to the parking lot.

  “There’s not much to say.” Summer forced a shaky grin. “I thought you’d be happy.”

  “You don’t know much, kiddo,” said Gwen, embracing her, “if you don’t realize that I’m never happy unless you are.”

  Bonnie’s divorce. Summer’s unhappiness, whatever its real cause. Gwen mulled over the events of the past two weeks and decided there had been too much secrecy among the Elm Creek Quilters for far too long.

  The next day, she told them about her plans for the new book.

  As she should have expected, they praised her idea and exclaimed that someone should have written such a book a long time ago. Summer offered to assist her with her research. Agnes recalled an acquaintance who had also entered the World’s Fair quilt competition and who ought still to have the quilt and possibly even some photographs of herself standing beside her entry in the exhibition hall. Each of her friends wanted to help; each assured her that publishers would fight over the right to publish her book and each vowed to buy a copy. When Diane offered to plan her book tour, Gwen laughed and said that academic presses typically did not send their authors around the country, but if Diane wanted to arrange something with the Waterford College bookstore or the independent bookstore downtown, she would have Gwen’s blessing.

  Her friends’ sincere praise rekindled her confidence in the potential of her new project—and gave her the courage to tell Bill about it.

  When Gwen asked if Bill was available, his assistant waved her right in, barely looking up from the brochures she was assembling for the Society for the Study of American Culture conference. Usually Martha screened the department chair’s unscheduled visitors more carefully, but Bill was a lame duck, and three years’ worth of dissatisfaction tended to come out in the last weeks of the term.

  Bill was on the phone, so when he gestured to a chair, she sat down and looked at the framed photos on the bookcase, feigning indifference to his conversation, something about next year’s hiring budget. Bill’s wife and William, Jr. smiled down on her.

  Before long Bill hung up. “Gwen,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve begun a new research project and wanted to run it by you before I submit a request for travel funds.”

  “Great.” He sat back in his leather chair expectantly. “Let’s hear it.”

  She told him about the quilt contest at the 1933 World’s Fair, and how 25,000 quilters—which translated to roughly one of every two thousand American women, given the population at the time—had sought the prize. She explained how a chronicle of the competition would provide an analysis of a folk art, but also fledgling advertising and marketing techniques for a growing industry. She described how a study of the pieces submitted for the exhibition would reveal how “progress” was imagined and defined by a people still recovering from World War I and struggling through the Depression. Her book would capture the mood and values of a nation during one of the most difficult periods of its history.

  Bill kept his expression impassive as she spoke. Sometimes his eyebrows rose, occasionally he nodded, but he gave no other sign that he shared her enthusiasm. When she finished, he nodded and mused in silence for a long moment. “Well,” he finally said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his desk. “It sounds like you’re on the right track, anyway.”

  “On the right track?”

  “I appreciate how much work you’ve put into your preliminary exploration, but—”

  “But what?”

  “Let’s face it. This isn’t much of a departure from your previous research.”

  “Ah.” She nodded and gave him a tight-lipped smile. “I see.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. It’s good that you’re focusing on the Depression; you’ll find numerous forums for publications, lectures, and so forth. I also see what you’re saying about how this contest captured the national mood in a critical era and all that. But couldn’t you …” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away before giving her a shrug. “Cou
ldn’t you find something else that does that just as well? Something other than quilting?”

  “Something like what?” asked Gwen. “Architecture, maybe? Sculpture or painting?”

  His face lit up. “Yes. Yes. That’s brilliant. I’d go with architecture myself. How did the architecture of the era reflect the values and hopes of the nation? How did the availability of materials or lack thereof determine design? How did the rate of new home building reflect the national economy, and was it comparable to how we use housing starts as an economic indicator today? That would be fascinating research.”

  “Yes, it would,” agreed Gwen. “I’d be interested in reading a paper on that subject. But I would not want to write one.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve already found the route into the national temper of the Depression I intend to pursue.” She stood. “If Depression-era architecture fascinates you so much, then you research it.”

  “Gwen.” He rose quickly and stopped her at the door. “Give it some thought. We’re talking about your career here. Do you know what the secretaries around here call you? The Quilt Lady. Is that how you want to be known?”

  “Why, Bill,” she said. “I had no idea you paid any attention to what your support staff says. I misjudged you.”

  “You must realize you’re sacrificing any remaining chance you had of becoming department chair someday.”

  “It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

  She bid him good-bye and shut the door behind her.

  She paused for a moment to catch her breath. She had told him, he had balked, as she had suspected he might, but he couldn’t stop her from studying what she wanted to study. She had worked too hard to obtain tenure to abandon such a promising idea for the sake of some administrative job she would likely never receive and would probably loathe anyway.

  On her way through the outer office, she gave Bill’s assistant a cheery smile. “He’s all yours,” she said.

  “Great,” said Martha, peering at her over the top of her bifocals. “That makes my day.”

  Gwen glimpsed a familiar tool in her hand and stopped short. Martha was trimming photographs with a rotary cutter. “You’d better not let Bill see you using that,” said Gwen with only a suggestion of the sarcasm Bill had earned. “That’s a quilting tool. He might ban it from the campus.”

  “Is it?” Martha inspected it with interest. “Strange. I don’t think he minds it so much. He’s the one who gave it to me. And the scissors.” She nodded to a gleaming pair of ergonomic shears lying on the desk.

  “Really.” Gwen picked up the shears and turned them over in her hands. Not a single nick marred the blades. “I thought only quilting shops carried this brand. I suppose Fabric Warehouse might, too.”

  “Don’t ask me. I don’t sew. And those aren’t leaving my offiice.” Martha held out her hand for the shears, and Gwen promptly returned them. “Bill got them from his son. They were left over from some project at the high school. The yearbook committee or some such.”

  “From William Junior?” That seemed odd. “Since when does a public high school let students walk off with brand-new tools?”

  “Don’t ask me. I don’t have kids.”

  “Right. Thanks anyway.”

  “There are worse nicknames than the Quilt Lady,” Martha remarked as Gwen left the office. “You should hear what we call Bill.”

  Bonnie could declare bankruptcy. That option came to her as she sat in the office long after her friends had gone home, pondering her future and struggling not to weep. Until she could reopen, she had no cash with which to pay her bills. Until she could pay her bills, she dared not order new inventory. Until she could order new inventory, she could not afford to reopen. Even if she sold every item on the newly rebuilt shelves, she might not earn enough to pay off her debts after deducting Summer’s and Diane’s wages from the gross income.

  There had to be a way. Bonnie blinked back tears and rested her head on her arms on the desk. She could run the sale herself. The lines would be long—if she were lucky—but maybe the customers would grant her a little extra patience considering the circumstances. She would have to take a week off from camp, at least, which she could not afford to do, but her friends would cover for her without complaint. She could sell the computers, the shelves, the light fixtures, the furniture—students were always looking for cheap items to furnish their campus homes. It would not be easy, but it would be possible.

  For a moment she allowed herself a wishful thought: The grand closing sale would be such a resounding success that she would earn enough to pay off her debts, order a truckload of new stock, and reopen better than before. The hope was fleeting. The new rental agreement on the desk beside her provided a sufficient reminder of the new reality she faced.

  She had not surrendered yet, but Krolich had won. She wished she could believe him responsible for the burglary, but he had too much at stake to resort to violence, especially since his other tactics were already succeeding.

  All she had to do was give the police Michael’s name. They would do the rest. Their revised report would exonerate her; the insurance company would meet its obligations. All she had to do was destroy her friend and her friend’s son.

  She could not. Not even for Grandma’s Attic.

  He might confess. Michael had made great strides since Sylvia had shown faith in him five years earlier by donating a parcel of land to be developed into a skateboard park. She had led the fundraising effort and had insisted Michael be allowed to advise the designers. That sense of finally belonging to his community, of having a voice that would be heard, had encouraged him to grow from a sullen and troubled adolescent into a young man with a sense of purpose and responsibility. Why had he thrown it away for revenge and a phony driver’s license? Didn’t he realize she would figure it out as soon as she discovered the confiscated fake ID was missing?

  She sat up and wiped her eyes. Of course he had. He had also known that Bonnie would be incapable of hurting Diane by exposing the truth.

  Bonnie decided to go home before Agnes phoned, worried about her whereabouts. She gathered her things and locked the door behind her. She headed for Agnes’s house, but after a few blocks, she hesitated and returned to the shop to check the door. It was locked, of course, just as it had been the night of the break-in, as she had known it would be.

  The next day at Elm Creek Manor, Bonnie took Summer and Diane aside before their afternoon sessions and shared her plan for one last, great sale. “The shelves will be bare when we’re through,” she said, forcing a laugh. “In fact, if we’re really lucky, there won’t be any shelves or even lightbulbs to see them by when we’re through. But we might just have enough to pay off the last outstanding debts.”

  “That’s a great idea,” said Summer, although she looked as if Bonnie had just announced a funeral.

  “We’ll help any way we can,” said Diane. “You know that.”

  Bonnie nodded. “I know. That’s why—” She took a deep breath. “That’s the only reason why I can say this. I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to help me as friends. I can’t afford to pay you.”

  Immediately they assured her that was all right, that they had assumed as much, and that they would have shoved their paychecks back into her hands rather than accept them.

  “You might as well,” said Bonnie, laughing to keep from crying. “They’d bounce.”

  Diane and Summer laughed and embraced her. She closed her eyes and clung to them.

  Three days later, Diane had emptied the last of the bran cereal into her bowl and was crumpling up the box to fit it into the trash can when it made a strange clinking noise. She opened the box, removed the bag, and discovered her key ring at the bottom.

  She held perfectly still for a moment, then withdrew her keys and threw the rest away. She wiped off the lingering film of cereal dust and returned the keys to her purse, lost in thought.

  The morning passed as she pondered what to do. Tim was out
of town at a conference or she might have consulted him, but she knew what he would say. She had to talk to Michael.

  The afternoon crawled by as she waited for Michael to come home to do his laundry. Finally, two hours after she was supposed to be at Elm Creek Manor helping to register the latest group of quilt campers, Michael entered, a gray laundry sack slung over one shoulder.

  He seemed surprised to see her. “Hey, Mom. Why aren’t you at camp?”

  “I needed to speak with you.”

  “Yeah?” He grinned and dropped his laundry bag in front of the door to the basement. “So you saw the catalogue? Did you have a chance to talk to Dad?”

  Bewildered, she just looked at him until she realized he was talking about the course catalogue and the highlighted passage about Judy’s class. “Yes, I saw it. Your father and I haven’t discussed it yet.”

  He frowned briefly. “Oh. Okay. Will you try to soon? Because if I’m going to get a new computer anyway, it would be great to have one before finals.”

  “Michael …” She took a shaky breath. “Please. I need you to tell me what you know about the break-in at Grandma’s Attic.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know much. Just what you’ve told me. Why?”

  She could not speak.

  He watched her in silence for a long moment. “You think I had something to do with it.”

  “Michael …” She did not want to admit it; she did not want to believe it. “My keys were missing when I looked for them on the morning before the break-in. I just found them today.”

  His voice was hard. “Then you obviously just misplaced them.”

  “I found them at the bottom of a cereal box.” For the life of her she could not imagine why he had put them there instead of returning them to her purse. Had someone suddenly walked in on him? Had he hoped to make her think she had absentmindedly put them there herself? “That catalogue you mentioned—I know you came home the night the keys were taken because you left that catalogue right by my purse.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m not the only person with access to your purse, you know. It’s not like you keep it in a bank vault.” He grabbed his laundry bag and glowered at her. “I bet you leave your purse lying around open at quilt camp all the time. I know you think all quilters are wonderful people, but you don’t know them. Who more than a quilter would want a key to a quilt shop?”