4 Plagued by Quilt (11 page)

“She means it was a rush job, but she looked around and found stuff for show-and-tell,” said Ben.

“You’re right. That is what I meant. Thank you for abbreviating and clarifying. The bottom line is, any
number of things could have happened.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “If Lillian made the quilt, it might be here, resting safely and comfortably in storage. Or she might have made it and given it away. Maybe it’s lying somewhere in sunny California, even as we speak. Or she might have been big on making plans but not so much on following through. Or maybe she made the quilt and it was well loved, well used, and completely worn out. It might have ended up, along with so many other things, in the household dump behind the barn.”

“Wrapped around one of those other things called a human body,” said Ben.

I could have thought that last supposition through better. While I kicked myself, Zach offered his observations.

“The bones in the dump are clean. If the dudes we found out there were wrapped in a quilt, then the quilt rotted with them. They’re dead. The quilt’s gone. And so far the bones aren’t talking.” If he’d been wearing a fedora, he would have pushed it low over his eyes at that point and put his feet up on the table, crossed at the ankles. He settled for crossing his arms and sinking his chin onto his chest.

“Them?”
Megan asked.

The girl I’d seen crying earlier, when I’d caught Mercy’s skirt and done my momentary flake-out, was sniffling quietly again and staring at the table. Her name was Carmen, and it seemed a good bet she wouldn’t come back after today, or even after lunch. Barb moved over and put an arm around her.

“Why don’t we take a break from quilts for a few minutes.” I put the scrapbook down and peeled off the gloves. I wasn’t sure what to do, but it seemed pretty
harsh to ask these kids to continue with the program as if nothing had happened. “Carmen, would you rather go home? Do you want to call someone?”

She shook her head no.

I looked around at the rest of the students. Some of them watched Carmen, and others seemed to be avoiding looking at her. Zach doodled long bones on the back of one of the handouts I’d given them. What I was about to do might not be the wisest idea, but it couldn’t be worse than plowing straight ahead with the program and ignoring obvious distress.

“Has anyone talked to you guys about the bones or what happened to Mr. Bell? Did Ms. Solberg or Deputy Dunbar say anything?”

“Is there more than one skeleton?” Ben asked.

Clod had told me not to say anything about the second skeleton. He probably thought he had a good reason. I didn’t know what it was, though, and I couldn’t see what difference it would make. Lying sure didn’t seem the right thing to do.

“Yes. It looks as though there are two.”

Without looking up from his doodles, Zach held up two fingers.

“Would it help if we stopped and talked about what’s happened? About what’s going on with the dig? Carmen, is that okay with you?”

She nodded and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

Barb pulled a tissue from a pocket and handed it to Carmen. “Ms. Solberg said we aren’t supposed to talk about any of it, if tourists ask us while we’re here at the site,” she said.

“This has been a rough, unusual, and emotional start
to a program,” I said. “And Barb, I want to thank you for being a good friend to Carmen. You’re all showing how resilient you are by being here. I’d like to thank all of you for that, too. So, what did you think of Ms. Solberg telling you not to talk with visitors?”

“She said she was treating us like professionals and professionals wouldn’t engage in idle speculation with visitors,” Barb answered.

Several of the students sat up straighter, as though trying to look more like professionals. Zach sank lower on his spine.

“That’s a good point,” I said. “Rumors are quick to start and hard to stop, and it’s better not to be the source of them, or the place they splatter when they land. You can call that professional ethics. Or plain old everyday ethics. Ethics aside, though, has anyone said anything specific to you about the skeletons or Mr. Bell’s death?” My possibly unwise plan to offer comfort was skating closer to the thin ice of snooping and prying. “Were any names mentioned? Any theories? Suggestions of a motive? Or a weapon?” Definitely unwise now.

Carmen and Barb looked at each other and shook their heads.

“They wouldn’t tell us anything like that,” Megan said. “They want us to act like professionals, but they still treat us like kids. Which is, technically, what we are.”

“Point taken. They didn’t tell you. But did you happen to
hear
anything?”

Ethan raised his hand. “Mr. Bell said something about the skeletons. He said, ‘Up until cemetery dude found the skeleton, this was going to be a good program. Now it’s going be a great program.’”

“He didn’t say ‘great,’” Nash said.

“Yeah, he did.”

“Nope. He didn’t. He said ‘incendiary.’”

“Dude.”
Remembrance and enlightenment lit Ethan’s face. “And that was
before
he knew there were two skeletons. So what’s better than incendiary? Maybe he thought it would go, like, thermonuclear.”

“Why, how, and what?” Nash asked with dampening rationality. “Dude, we’re at a two-week history-geek fest at the Homeplace. In Blue Lump, Tennessee. Big whoop. There’s nothing close to thermonuclear here. Besides, he never knew there were two. He was dead before they found the second one.” He turned to Zach. “When did you find the second one?”

Ethan didn’t give Zach a chance to answer. “But maybe that’s
why
he was killed. Because he
did
know there was more than one.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys.” I interrupted before Ethan got too carried away. “Remember the ethics thing? Going off on ‘what ifs’ is what Ms. Solberg meant, and why she doesn’t want you discussing this with visitors.”

The faces of both teens closed a bit.

“On the other hand, I’m not a visitor and I love ‘what ifs.’ But are you sure Mr. Bell used the word ‘incendiary’? It’s not as over-the-top as ‘thermonuclear,’ but it still is over-the-top.”

“So was he,” Zach said without looking up from his doodles. He’d started a row of toothless jawbones.

“No, he wasn’t. He was
cute
,” Carmen blurted, and immediately clapped a hand over her mouth, her cheeks glowing.

“Does anyone have any idea what he meant by ‘incendiary’?” I asked, moving away from Carmen, so that
eyes might follow me and give her a moment to get her flames under control. “Did he say how the program would change or be different? Did you get the feeling he meant it would be better? He seemed pretty wired after Zach found the bones. But did he say anything that gives us a clue to what he meant?”

Those questions got nothing but shrugs. Then my phone rang. It was poor form, but I checked the display. Ardis.

“News about our quilting volunteers,” I said to the teens. “Excuse me for a second.”

Ardis didn’t wait for a hello. “You’ll never guess who it was who told your volunteers you didn’t need them,” she said. “Flat-out said you wouldn’t need them. You’ll never guess.”

“Then I won’t try. Who was it?”

“Nadine.”

“W
hat?”
I quickly put my reaction in check and smiled for the students’ benefit.

“The message came from Nadine.”

“What kind of sense does that make?” Incredulity fought for the upper hand, but I managed to keep my voice low and even.

“Heaven only knows. There’s a lot going on, and she might not be thinking. Maybe she was confused.”

“Right. Thanks for checking, Ardis. I’ll see you later.”

I disconnected, still smiling for the students’ benefit, seething for my own. Did Nadine
want
a disaster? If she’d called the volunteers, then that was why Shirley and Mercy disappeared, too. She must have cornered them and sent them packing. With the Plague Quilt. Did that mean I’d have to strike some other bargain with the twins? Talk about disaster! I felt like hunting Nadine down and asking her what her game was. But maybe it really was a game. Maybe Ardis was right and someone misinterpreted Nadine’s message like an old-fashioned game of telephone. That seemed idiotic, but about as plausible as Nadine canceling the volunteers without warning or telling me.

I talked myself down from my high horse, deciding to give Nadine the benefit of the doubt, or at least a chance
to deny or explain. And I knew I’d better find my cool before asking her. We didn’t need more tension, or outright antagonism.

“Interesting news about our quilting volunteers,” I said to the students. “And that news is we’re going to start our hands-on quilt project with the basics—so basic we don’t need volunteers. Our goal is to end up with a small signature crazy quilt.”

Ethan raised his hand. “Who gets to keep it?”

“It’ll be one of the featured items in a gala auction, raising funds for the Homeplace, later this fall.”

Ethan’s hand stayed up. “Whose signatures?”

“Yours for starters. And maybe some local celebrities will contribute theirs.”

“Like who?” Barb asked.

“Ms. Solberg is working on that. What we’re going to work on, today, is a basic embroidery stitch.” Because I’d never pieced a crazy quilt in my life. But there was time for piecing later, after I reassembled the volunteers. This program, and especially the quilting portion of it, was
not
going to be a disaster. “How many of you have ever threaded a needle?”

Without too many fumbles or pricked fingers, I left them practicing their chain stitch. I had to exact a promise from Ethan and Nash that they’d stop using their needles as miniature épées, and then I went hunting, wondering if I needed a sword in case Nadine turned into a dragon. If not a sword, then maybe an apology would do the trick.

*   *   *

Nadine and Wes stood in the visitors’ center lobby talking to a woman whose back was turned to me. The woman had her hands stuck in the back pockets of her jeans,
reminding me immediately of Grace, and for that instant, I thought the sheriff had released her. But this woman had more curves than Grace, and hair falling to her shoulders instead of Grace’s shorter hair tucked behind her ears.

I waited at the corner where the hall I was in met the lobby, not sure if I should interrupt. When I heard Nadine mention the police and Phillip’s cottage, I stayed put.

“All I can tell you is what they’ve told me,” Nadine said. “They haven’t finished and they aren’t ready to let anyone else go in to pack or clean.”

While she listened to Nadine, the woman gathered her heavy hair and lifted it off her neck, exposing a small tattoo below and behind her ear. From where I stood, it looked like a cardinal’s feather. She put an elastic band around her hair and let it fall in a low ponytail.

“When I hear anything, I’ll let you know,” Nadine said.

The woman said something in return that I didn’t catch. But I did catch her laugh—not a happy laugh, but low, throaty, and familiar. I was sure I’d heard it before, when I called Phillip. This had to be the woman who’d answered his phone.

Nadine caught sight of me then. I really wasn’t trying to be invisible. Or surreptitious. Much. I smiled to cover a lingering sense of sneakiness, though, and went over to join them. Wes Treadwell, looking serious and concerned, nodded. Nadine didn’t return my smile or nod, but she didn’t snarl or bite my head off, either. She did introduce me to the woman.

“Kath, you wanted to meet Fredda Oliver, and here she is. Fredda is our wonderful and valuable site caretaker. Fredda, I’d like you to meet Kath Rutledge. Kath is one of the volunteers for the Hands on History program.

Fredda was . . . steamy. Not just her curves, throaty
voice, thick dark hair, and the long-lashed, sleepy eyes with which she regarded me. She was sweaty, too. Apparently she’d just finished mowing the back forty. Or something. I was at least ninety-five percent sure she was the woman laughing and answering Phillip’s phone that night, but she gave no flicker of recognition when Nadine introduced us. What had Clod and Shorty said, though? That Fredda told more believable lies than I did. Or than my face did. So, again, there was the question I’d asked Joe that he hadn’t answered—what did Fredda have to lie about? And what, if anything, did that have to do with Phillip’s death? Being able to lie wasn’t necessarily the first step on the road to ruination and murder. Still, if she lied to Clod and Shorty . . . I decided to put her face to a test.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “I think we might’ve spoken on the phone, once.”

She appeared to think back, but all she came up with was a shake of her head. “I can’t think why we would have.”

And I couldn’t see how I’d learned a thing from that dumb experiment. She didn’t look as if she was lying, but how was I supposed to know? I hadn’t chosen my question wisely.

“Any particular reason you wanted to meet me?” Fredda asked.

“Someone mentioned your name. I guess I was surprised I hadn’t bumped into you before.”

“And now you have. Nice to meet you, too.”

I couldn’t tell if that was true, either, but somehow I doubted it. Her greeting didn’t leave me all warm and fuzzy, anyway.

“I’ll talk to you later, Nadine,” she said. “You’re right; I am curious to see the inside of the place. So, yeah, give
me a call when you know his folks will be here, and if it’s after hours, there’s no need for you to come all the way out. I’ll let them in.”

“I’ll come out no matter what time they arrive, Fredda,” Nadine said. “I’ll want to offer my condolences in person. I can’t imagine what they’re going through right now.”

Wes put a hand on Nadine’s elbow. She didn’t quite jump at his touch, but for a second her back straightened, then relaxed.

I didn’t know if Fredda saw that tiny interaction, too, but as she passed me on her way out, she gave me the hint of a wink. “I understand we have a friend in common,” she said, her husky voice low in her throat. Before I could ask her who, her voice chuckled even lower. “That would be the more delicious of the two Dunbars.”

I sort of lost my train of thought at that point, and it was all I could do not to stare after her with my mouth hanging open. Did she call Joe delicious and imply . . . what? Nadine’s voice snapped me back.

“Did you need something, Kath?”

“To apologize for being short with you earlier, Nadine.”

“We’re all on edge,” she said, sounding on edge and not entirely forgiving. “Is that all?”

“Also to run something by you.” I’d thought of something I could do to punt the rest of the quilting session for the day. I slowed my breathing, trying to follow Clod’s advice on relaxing one’s vocal cords when lying. “Phillip suggested that I take the students on a tour of the storage area and archives, taking half the group at a time. Now that we’re down to half as many, I thought I might as well take all of them at once. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

“As long as they’re ready to break for lunch and Wes’ presentation, I don’t see why that should be a problem.”

“Thanks. Phillip didn’t tell me where the key for the storage room is, though.” I felt entirely honest saying that, and must have sounded it, too. I should remember to thank Clod.

“There’s a key box on the wall behind the door in his office.”

“And I won’t need a key for the box?”

“No.”

Wes looked bored with our housekeeping details. That shouldn’t have bothered me; I didn’t know the man and didn’t need to care about what he thought. But I’d known men like him. Administrative types who couldn’t be bothered to take, or at least fake, an interest in what the women standing with them were talking about. If Wes had looked contemplative or preoccupied, I might have given him a pass. He’d ignored me the other day, when he and Nadine came to see the bones, though, and now he looked on the verge of rolling his eyes, and that was too much. I wanted to wake him up, and it was tempting to tip him over the eye-rolling edge by asking him something to do with fibers or textiles or some other “woman’s” subject. Instead I asked him what he planned to talk about over lunch during his presentation for the students. My ploy might have worked, too, but Nadine answered first.

“Wes has graciously come to the rescue by stepping up to the plate and stepping in for Phillip.”

That didn’t tell me what he was going to talk about, but it did tell me he was a verifiable home-run king and superhero all rolled into one. Or maybe that was too sarcastic. Maybe it just told me that there were interesting
dynamics between Nadine and Wes. Suspicious dynamics? Who knew?

I’d left the students for longer than I meant to, and turned to go, and then I remembered what else I wanted to ask.

“One more question, Nadine. When you talked to the volunteers last night, you didn’t tell any of them we didn’t need them, did you?”

“Why would I do that? Is there a problem?” she demanded.

I waved her concerns away. “No, one of them said she’d heard something, and I said I’d ask. You know how these things go.” Interesting. But if Nadine hadn’t told the volunteers we didn’t need them, who had and used her name? Or was Nadine as good a liar as Fredda? I’d watched her face and listened for tightening in
her
voice, and hadn’t detected either. But maybe I wasn’t so attuned to those clues as Clod was.

I dashed back to the education room, hoping to find a dozen teenagers bent industriously over their stitching. They weren’t. They’d abandoned their needles and floss and were gathered around a table, transfixed by whatever they were looking at. All of them except Zach. He sat in his own world of tiny white bones that he’d chain-stitched on a scrap of black velvet. At first, I didn’t see what held the other students so engrossed, but it didn’t take more than a few breaths before the clues smacked me upside my nose. Then the students shifted, and there were Shirley and Mercy, hovering on the other side of the table. And there was the Plague Quilt, its deep colors and rich embroidery shimmering the way the surface of water does when it’s far, far down in a well.

Barging in and wresting the class away from the Spiveys
was an option. In another situation, saving teenagers—or any innocent bystanders—from the twins’ clutches might be the only option worth considering. Not this time, though. I crept in, on stealthy Kath feet, giving Zach a thumbs-up for creativity in embroidery on my way past. He was still cool, though, and didn’t acknowledge my thumb.

The Plague Quilt drew me, and at the same time it worried me. What would happen if I touched it?

One of the students—Barb?—saw me and waved me forward.

“Look,” she said, “it’s got autographs.”

In the one quick look the twins had allowed me the other day, I hadn’t noticed signatures on the Plague Quilt. I’d been too caught up in the colors.

“They aren’t signatures,” Zach corrected.

“They’re names,” said Barb. “Same difference.”

“Big difference,” Zach said. “They’re all in the same handwriting, so they aren’t real autographs.”

Barb made a face at Zach. He was more invested in his embroidered bones and didn’t notice.
I
noticed the twins starting to refold the quilt.

“Wait,” I said, practically leaping forward.

They folded faster, sliding the quilt back into its muslin bag and setting the bag on the table behind them, all in an annoying Spivey twinkling. And then they bossed the students back into their seats, clapping their hands and chivying them along by telling them time was wasting and quilts weren’t made in a day. Oddly enough, their efforts were effective—the students complied without complaint.

But while they were being officious and efficient, the twins kept darting glances at me. If I moved to the left, one of them mirrored that movement. Through some secret Spivey sense, they tracked me and one of them faced
me at all times. It was as though they didn’t know what to expect from me. As though I might suddenly . . . what? Pounce on them? Grab the quilt and run?

They were in good company; I didn’t know what to expect from me, either. I had questions for them, but I was wary, too—wary of upsetting them so that they’d take the quilt away and I’d never see it again, and wary of the quilt. Was there a connection between it and the twins’ skirts, beyond the velvet coming from Rebecca? Did that matter? But I had two bigger questions. First, if Nadine hadn’t told the twins we didn’t need volunteers, then where had they disappeared to? And second, why was it called the Plague Quilt? The answer to the first question might be simple. They’d gone out to the car to get the quilt. But why had it taken so long? What had they been up to? “Up to” as opposed to “doing”—of that I was sure. I decided to treat the twins the way I did Geneva when she was skittish—act as though everything was going as planned. Go for the smooth. Nadine might not have known what that meant, but I was sure Zach would. Going for the smooth with the twins might be the only way to learn more about the quilt.

They were showing the students how to arrange various sizes and shapes of cotton scraps on squares of muslin for backing, looking at colors and patterns. The students were attentive and enjoying themselves, all of which put me in a quandary. Did I let the twins continue, or did I interrupt and take the students on the spurious tour of the storage area? Or . . . did I let the twins do their thing while I went on a solo reconnaissance tour of the storage and archives? I approached Shirley slowly, calmly, smoothly. I knew it was Shirley because I could breathe easily.