Elm Creek Quilts [06] The Master Quilter

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  She had actually considered that, but the campers would not have known that she had a key to Grandma’s Attic, and even if one had, a burglar with an interest in quilting would have stolen far more and damaged far less.

  “I didn’t do it,” he said flatly. “I can’t believe you think I would.”

  He turned and headed for the door.

  “Michael,” she called, racing after him and touching his shoulder. “Please. Mrs. Markham will lose everything as long as the police believe it was an inside job.”

  He jerked away from her. “Yeah? Maybe it was. I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is I didn’t do it.”

  He tore open the door and slammed it shut behind him.

  Diane reached for the doorknob, hesitated, and released it. She had rarely seen him so angry, but she had too frequently seen him lie with the same persuasive vehemence.

  She turned around and leaned against the door.

  A sudden movement caught her eye; she glanced up to find Todd standing frozen on the stairs. He had heard everything.

  Todd. Michael was not the only one with access to her purse. No, it was incomprehensible.

  “Mom,” said Todd. “Michael wouldn’t do something like that.”

  Diane pressed her lips together and forced herself to nod.

  Mary Beth sat at the kitchen table going over the social chair’s notes for the end-of-the-year picnic. Less than a third of the members had registered, a fraction of the number who had sent in their deposits by this time last year. At the monthly meeting of the guild the previous evening, the social chair had made another beseeching, bewildered plea for people to get their forms in on time, but attendance had been down sharply, so few of the people who needed to get the message were there to hear it. “I don’t understand,” Dottie whispered, passing Mary Beth on the way back to her seat. “We’ve never had so many people miss the deadline before.”

  Mary Beth gave her what she hoped was an encouraging smile, but she doubted two-thirds of the guild had forgotten the date. They simply weren’t coming.

  “Mom?”

  She looked up, startled from her gloomy reverie. Brent was peeking in the doorway, grinning.

  “Yes, honey?” she said. “What is it?”

  “I know it’s early.” He emerged from the doorway carrying a large box. “But I know you could use it, so I thought I’d give you your Mother’s Day present now.”

  He set the box on the table, and Mary Beth gasped.

  “A Bernina?” She reached out eagerly, then shot him a wry look. “Or it’s something else in a Bernina box.”

  “Open it and find out.”

  Disbelieving, she unpacked the box to find that it indeed contained a new sewing machine, the sewing machine of her dreams, one with a computer touch screen and more features and attachments than she knew existed. “Brent,” she gasped, running her hands over it. “It’s wonderful, it’s perfect, it’s—” She jerked her hands away as if the beautiful sewing machine had scalded her. “How in the world did you afford this? It must have cost you thousands of dollars.”

  His grin widened. “It’s rude to ask the price of a gift.”

  “Yes, honey, I know, but in this case—” She gazed at the sewing machine longingly. “Is this from you and your brothers? Did your father pitch in?”

  “No, it’s just from me, and you’re still close to the borderline of that rudeness thing.”

  All at once, she knew. His college fund. “I can’t accept this,” she said, reluctant. “You can’t spend your college fund on gifts for me.”

  He laughed. “I didn’t.” He dug in the box for the user’s manual and placed it in her hands. “It didn’t cost me as much as you think, so just say thank you and read the manual.”

  “Thank you.” Overwhelmed, she hugged him and kissed him on the forehead. “You are such a dear, sweet boy.”

  He strode from the room, pleased and proud, as she pushed the social chairwoman’s notes aside and pulled the shining new sewing machine closer to her place at the table. Then she let out a shriek of delight, tossed the manual aside, and ran upstairs for fabric and thread.

  Two days later, Todd slipped into the desk behind Brent, who turned around and said, “Did you get the answer for the third homework problem? I got 2-i, but that can’t be right.”

  “I have a better question.” Todd leaned forward and murmured, “Did you trash the quilt shop by yourself or did Will and Greg help?”

  Brent blinked, then assumed a quizzical expression. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I know you did it, and I know how. What I can’t figure out is why. What do you have against Mrs. Markham? Or was it just for the money?”

  Brent shook his head, a small, incredulous grin playing on his lips. “What have you been sniffing?”

  “My mother isn’t stupid. She’s going to remember you slept over that night, and she’ll figure out you took her keys. And then …” Todd sat back and shrugged.

  At the front of the room, the Calculus teacher began class. Brent shot Todd a vengeful look over his shoulder as he turned to face front.

  For the next fifty minutes, Todd took notes and answered questions and grimly watched his best friend, who did not turn around again.

  Judy met Gwen for lunch on a Wednesday, the one day that week when neither woman taught at Elm Creek Quilt Camp. They had only an hour, so Gwen raced through an update on her research project so they could discuss Summer’s abrupt break-up with Jeremy and Bonnie’s plans for a going-out-of-business sale, although neither dared to call it that. Gwen was so forthcoming with her concerns about work and her daughter that Judy was tempted to confide her own secret, but she had not heard anything from Penn since her interview more than three weeks before, so she decided to keep quiet.

  When she returned to the office after lunch, her grad students reported that Rick had phoned.

  She called him back and left a message on his voicemail, then hung around the lab impatiently waiting for him to return her call. She left to teach her afternoon Introduction to Programming class and raced back to snatch up the ringing phone just before voicemail would have answered.

  Mercifully, he delivered the news without a lengthy preamble. “The job’s yours if you still want it.”

  The official offer had gone out in the afternoon mail, he said, but the terms were just as they had discussed during her interview. Rick promised that the letter contained no surprises and that she would not be disappointed.

  “Sign the letter of intent and send it back,” he urged. “If you know what’s good for you. Get out of that hole in the wall and come where the real action is.”

  “I’ll let you know,” she told him.

  “What? The job of a lifetime gets dumped in your lap and you can’t even give me the courtesy of a straight answer?”

  “You can wait a few days. You kept me in suspense for three weeks,” she reminded him.

  “It was a tough decision! Do you think we interviewed just anyone?”

  “I know you didn’t. Just consider this as a little payback for all the stress you put me through this semester.”

  She promised to contact him as soon as she had a chance to review the official offer, and then she called Steve.

  “Honey,” she said as soon as her husband answered, “we have a decision to make.”

  Mary Beth was so shocked to hear Diane’s voice on the line that she almost dropped the phone.

  “I know I’m the last person you expected,” said Diane, and her laugh was, if anything, nervous.

  “That’s certainly true.” Diane had not called the Callahan home in years. Did she intend to apologize? If so, it was a long time coming—one month to the day after she had crashed the quilt guild meeting. Mary Beth waited, wondering why Diane bothered this time when she had never expressed regret for any of her previous insults throughout the years. Because of the severity of her offense? She had certainly jeopardized Mary Beth’s standing in the quil
t guild, but Diane ought to find that cause for celebration, not remorse.

  Then Mary Beth figured it out. Diane wanted the guild’s support for that going-out-of-business sale at Grandma’s Attic next week. Mary Beth had seen the signs in the store windows, but she remained steadfast in her vow never to cross that threshold again. In a hundred years Diane could not grovel enough to change Mary Beth’s mind about that.

  After a long pause, Diane said, “I’ll get straight to the point, then.”

  “I do wish you would.”

  “Have you heard about the burglary at Grandma’s Attic?”

  “I read the paper.”

  “Yes, well, I wondered if Brent might know anything about it.”

  Icily, Mary Beth asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not saying he did it, but he might know who did. You see, my key to the shop disappeared after he spent the night here, and the next night the shop was broken into, and there was no sign of forced entry—”

  “How dare you?”

  “I’m sorry. I know this is a terrible thing to suggest, but—”

  “You’re darn right it is. I’ll have you know that my son was right here at home that entire night. What about your son?”

  “Todd was—”

  “Not Todd. Michael. He’s the troublemaker in this town. Everyone knows his reputation. I bet this wouldn’t be the first time he took your keys.”

  A pause. “You would be right,” said Diane, “but he assures me he had nothing to do with it.”

  “He assures you.” Mary Beth snickered. “Oh, that’s rich.”

  “Please, Mary Beth, talk to Brent.”

  “I’m hanging up now.” And she did just that.

  She grabbed the back of a kitchen chair for support. That woman, that horrible, cruel, vicious woman. Mary Beth sat down, head spinning. Diane need look no further than her own delinquent son if she was so eager to find someone to blame. Brent was definitely asleep in his own bed that night, not that it mattered because he absolutely could not have been involved, but he was always home on weeknights. Except—Mary Beth tried to remember. The robbery had occurred during spring break. Brent had spent Monday night at Todd’s and Tuesday night at Greg’s.

  She felt a chill but shook it off. She would phone Greg’s parents. They would confirm that Brent had spent the entire night beneath their roof.

  No one picked up at home, of course. She looked up the Department of Sociology in the phone book and obtained both professors’ office numbers from the secretary. Greg’s mother did not answer, but his father did.

  By that time Mary Beth had worked out her story. She said that Brent had been missing his watch since spring break and they wondered if he had left it at Greg’s house when he spent the night.

  “I’ll ask Greg if he’s seen it,” he responded, “but Brent should probably check with Will.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s where the boys spent the night.”

  “Are you sure?” Mary Beth’s heart thumped. “I was sure Brent said your house.”

  “No, it definitely wasn’t, because Marcella and I were out of town at a conference. We have strict rules against overnight guests while we’re away.”

  Mary Beth murmured an apology, thanked him, and hung up. She did not call Will’s parents. She knew they would cheerfully assure her that the boys had indeed been at Greg’s house under his parents’ supervision the entire night.

  Brent had lied to her. Well, she should not be surprised. No teenage boy told his mother the truth all the time. But just because he’d lied about his whereabouts so he and his friends could have some unsupervised fun, maybe even a party or something, that did not mean he had broken into the quilt shop. It hurt his alibi, but nothing suggested he had anything to do with the crime.

  Except for the sewing machine, the early Mother’s Day present he could not possibly have afforded no matter what he claimed, no matter how much she wanted to believe otherwise.

  The realization sank in like a cold stone into a pond. When she could, she rose and climbed the stairs and knocked on her son’s door. He was at his desk studying, stacks of books piled around him.

  He smiled so affectionately at her that she faltered, but she forced herself to do what she had come to do. “Honey,” she said. “I think there’s a problem with the sewing machine. I may—I may need to exchange it at the store. Would you mind giving me the receipt?”

  His expression did not change. “I think I threw it away.”

  “Well, do you have the credit card statement? I know you couldn’t have paid cash. The store might be willing to accept an exchange with that.”

  He shook his head. “I did pay cash.”

  “Oh.” Mary Beth looked away, her palm slick with perspiration on the doorknob. “Well, how? If you didn’t take the money out of your college account, where”

  “It’s not new,” he blurted.

  “What?”

  “It’s not new. I bought it at a garage sale. I passed it on my way back from the library and saw some quilting stuff, you know, stacks of fabric and stuff, and then I saw the sewing machine still in the box. They were only asking fifty bucks for it.”

  “Fifty?”

  “I know. I couldn’t believe it either. The lady in charge said it was her mother-in-law’s. She got it for her birthday but died before she ever had a chance to use it. That’s why her kids were having the garage sale, to get rid of a lot of her stuff.”

  “I thought I knew all the quilters in Waterford,” said Mary Beth. “I didn’t hear of anyone passing away.”

  “She wasn’t from around here. Just her kids. She lived in a retirement home in Pittsburgh or something.” Brent rose, stricken. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know I should have told you the whole truth, but you were so happy. I wanted you to think I had given you something really great.”

  She touched his shoulder. “You did. It’s wonderful.”

  “Yeah, except it’s broken, and now you can’t return it.”

  “I think maybe I can fix it.” Mary Beth forced a smile. “I’ll check the manual again. You go ahead and get back to your studying. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

  He hugged her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the whole story right away.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, patting his back and holding back tears.

  The signs in the window called it a Spring Spectacular Sale, but Summer knew better, and she suspected most of their customers would figure it out when they saw the half-empty shelves and the funereal expressions on Bonnie and her volunteer employees. Bonnie tried to raise their spirits with generous estimates of how much money they might earn over the five days of the sale, but Summer did not need Sarah’s accounting degree to know that even if the shelves were bare by Friday afternoon, they would not have earned enough to pay all the bills.

  Fifteen minutes before opening on Monday morning, Summer and Diane sat in the back office as Bonnie made coffee and reminded them about a few last-minute price adjustments. “Make sure to tell everyone there will be no refunds,” she advised as she filled three mugs with the Daily Grind’s house blend.

  “What if they ask why?” asked Diane.

  Bonnie shrugged and handed around the coffee. “Tell them it’s the only way I can afford these low, low prices. Well, here goes.” She raised her mug. “Cheers.”

  “To Grandma’s Attic,” said Summer.

  Diane and Bonnie echoed her, and they clinked their mugs together. They drank, then filed out of the office clutching their coffee mugs as if for warmth.

  Through the front window they saw a handful of women already waiting, shopping bags in their arms.

  “Summer, would you let them in, please?” asked Bonnie, absently smoothing her red apron. Summer nodded and hurried to the front door. She welcomed the five waiting women as they entered, but her smile failed her when they halted and eyed the scanty shelves with surprise.

  “I know it looks bare,” said Summer, “but there
are some real bargains here.”

  “It’s a good thing we came early,” remarked one of the women. “You’re sure to sell out soon.”

  “Mary Beth wasn’t kidding,” added the second woman, hefting her shopping bag, which bulged as if it were already full. “You definitely need this stuff. Where would you like it?”

  “Mary Beth?” echoed Summer warily. “What stuff?”

  “Donations for the sale,” said the first woman. The others nodded and indicated their bags. “What, didn’t you know? Mary Beth sent out a letter to everyone in the guild asking us to raid our stashes for fabric and notions for Bonnie to sell.”

  Bonnie gasped.

  “Oh, and blocks for Sylvia’s bridal quilt, too.” Another woman beamed at Diane and withdrew a plastic sandwich bag from her tote. Summer caught a glimpse of colorful patchwork. “I was surprised she urged us to make them, given her reaction to your announcement at the guild, but she did.”

  “Her what?” exclaimed Bonnie and Summer in unison, looking to Diane in astonishment. Diane shrugged.

  The first woman carried her bag to the cutting table. “May I leave this here while I shop?”

  “Of course,” said Bonnie, hurrying to assist. The other women followed, and soon a pile of fabric, notions, and pattern books covered a good portion of the table. Bonnie, looking somewhat shocked, waved Summer and Diane over. “Sort all this out, would you?” she murmured, watching the women as they browsed the scanty shelves.

  Speechless, Summer nodded. She and Diane quickly got to work while Bonnie attended to the customers. It was obvious that the women had not used this occasion to get rid of their scraps and discards. The minimum fabric cut Summer came across was a fat quarter, the fabric selections included only the same fine-quality cloth Bonnie herself sold, and the pattern books still had their templates.